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Letters on Life 



BY 



CLAUDIUS CLEAR 



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NEW YORK 



?^oDD^ j^eaD s, Company 

1 90 1 



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12 Uf 



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TO 
M. B. AND J. M. B. 

IN MEMORY OF 

OUR AMERICAN JOURNEY 

AND 

MANY OTHER THINGS 



/ 



Contents 



I. The Art of Life .... 

II. That Literature is Autobiography 

III. The Art of Conversation 

IV. On the Art of taking Things coolly 
V. Vanity and its Mortifications 

VI. Some Questions about Holidays 

VII. "When Three Stars came out" 

VIII. Midnight Tea .... 

IX. Firing out the Fools 

X. "A Fellow by the Name of Rowan" 

XI. Taking Good Men into Confidence 

XII. The Sin of Overwork . 

XIII. Samuel 



14 

25 

36 

47 

58 

69 

80 

88 

100 

"3 

121 

130 



%» Contents ^ 



PAGE 



XIV. How TO Remember and how to Forget 138 

XV. "R.S.V.P." 149 

XIV. Concerning Order and Method. . 158 

XVII. Should Old Letters be kept? . . 168 

XVIII. The Secret of Mrs. Farfrae . , 180 

XIX. Brilliance 192 

XX. On Handwriting 201 

XXI. The Happy Life 210 

XXII. The Man in the Street . . . 219 

XXIII. The Zest of Life 227 

XXIV. Good Manners 233 

XXV. On Growing Old 247 

XXVI. Broken-Hearted ..... 259 

XXVII. The Innermost Room .... 270 



The Art of Life 

At the end of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Grand- 
father's Chair, after the Chair has told many 
stories, it is asked by the Grandfather to confer 
a final favour. " ' During an existence of more 
than two centuries you have had a familiar 
intercourse with men who were esteemed the 
wisest of their day. Doubtless with your 
capacious understanding you have treasured up 
many an invaluable lesson of wisdom. You 
certainly have had time enough to guess the 
riddle of life. Tell us poor mortals, then, how 
we may be happy.' The Chair assumed an 
aspect of deep meditation, and at last beckoned 
to Grandfather with its elbow, and made a step 
sideways towards him as if it had a very im- 
portant secret to communicate. ' As long as I 
have stood in the midst of human affairs,' said 
the Chair, with a very oracular enunciation, ' I 

B I 



The Art of Life 



have constantly observed that Justice, Truth, and 
Love are the chief ingredients of every happy 
life.' * Justice, Truth, and Love ! ' exclaimed 
Grandfather. ' We need not exist two centuries 
to find out that these qualities are essential to 
our happiness. This is no secret. Every human 
being is born with the instinctive knowledge 
of it.' ' Ah ! ' cried the Chair, drawing back in 
surprise, ' from what I have observed of the 
dealings of man with man, of nation with nation, 
I should never have suspected that they knew 
this all-important secret.' The Chair announced 
that its lips are closed for the next hundred 
years. * At the end of that period, if I shall 
have discovered any new precepts of happiness 
better than what heaven has already taught you, 
they shall assuredly be given to the world.' " 
Here we have the explanation of the fact that 
precepts on the conduct of life often read like 
trite, threadbare, incontestable platitudes, and 
that many are inclined to deny that there is 
such an art as the art of living. A good heart, 
sound 'principles, and an honest purpose, it is 
said, will bring you safely through, and the 
experience of other travellers is of small account. 
2 



The Art of Life 



It is not so. Life is never the smooth path it 
seems to confident youth. It is a rough road 
cut with dangerous ruts, and apparently httle 
mended by the successive generations of pilgrims. 
The highest wisdom is to be found in common- 
places. The best help that can be rendered to 
humanity is the representation of commonplaces 
as they are confirmed and illuminated by ex- 
perience. Pascal said that the best books were 
the books which each man thought he could 
have written for himself Few men imagine 
that they could have written great scientific or 
historical books. They all think themselves 
capable of writing observations of life and 
manners, and in a sense they are, for they have 
had the opportunities of acquiring the knowledge 
on which such observations must be founded. 
La Bruyere, one of the greatest writers on the 
art of life, says : " I restored to the public what 
it has lent me." 

So through the ages we have a line of books 
on conduct written by men and women of very 
varying powers, and yet all are valuable in 
some way, if they are written honestly from a 
real experience. Often the lessons of life are 

3 



The Art of Life 



best conveyed indirectly. Thus we have a 
significant, if not very extensive, literature of 
characters. In Professor J ebb's admirable preface 
to his edition of Theoplirastus — a book which 
should not have been allowed to go out of 
print — we have many excellent remarks on 
character writing. A very good second is Mr. 
Alfred West's introduction to the Pitt Press 
edition of Earle's Microcosmography. Mr. West 
describes the books of Joseph Hall, of Sir 
Thomas Overbury, of Samuel Butler, and others. 
Perhaps it scarcely was within his scope to set 
forth the singular merits of William Law's 
character sketches, which are, on the whole, the 
most finished and satisfactory in English litera- 
ture. But even Law himself must yield without 
a struggle to La Bruyere. Of him no less a 
critic than Sainte Beuve said : 

" Happy La Bruyere ! When so many more 
lofty glories have sunk, when the eighteenth 
century has passed away, and men speak of it 
as of an old fashion — when the seventeenth 
itself is exposed to attack on all sides, to the 
irreverence and incredulity of new schools — he, 
as if by a miracle, is alone respected, he alone 

4 



The Art of Life 



holds his own, he is spared. What do I say ? 
He is read, he is admired, he is praised, precisely 
for the marked, incisive manner, a little too 
strong perhaps for his own time, but which is 
no more than we require now. Of this style he 
remains the first model. Fenelon, all Fdnelon, 
pales and trembles ; but his colours stand as 
bright as when first laid on the canvas. Time 
has deprived his solid and vigorous manner of 
no excellence. The artist has not ceased to 
reverence him. . . . He is still everybody's 
classic." 

Among later writers no one has more deeply 
considered the art of life than Walter Pater, 
though I do not forget the quiet but sterling 
merits of such authors as Arthur Helps, P. G. 
Hamerton and Anne Mozley. 

In teaching the art of life there can be no 
more useful books than biographies. I have 
for years read every biography I could lay my 
hands on, and not one has failed to teach me 
something. Mrs. Oliphant, who was herself a 
skilful biographer, and who observed life more 
shrewdly and keenly than most, has a passage 
in which she describes the fascination of watching 

5 



The Art of Life 



from the gallery the combat of a human soul, 
its defeats, its victories, and its last issues. A 
very able writer of recent times has said the 
worst that can be said against biographies, and 
especially the biographies of prophets and sages. 
The prophets of the Highest, says he, are de- 
graded and despoiled by ill-judging biographers 
who in .truth's name lay bare the life, not of 
the man whom they pretend to honour, but of 
his meaner and mortal double. Of the greater 
men in any generation, poets, orators, preachers, 
prophets, biographies should not be written. 
" Let them be as voices crying, if in that cry 
they deliver themselves in some measure from 
the material encumbrances of life. Let them be 
advantaged thereby themselves, and advantage 
their hearers. Why replace the voice in its 
fleshly tabernacle ? " He goes on to compare the 
practice of biographers to the art of embalming. 
It preserves bodies of men in a sort of ghastly 
caricature of those who once wore them. " For 
a shorter time or a longer it preserves from 
entire decay that which it better had suffered 
to perish, but it cannot aid in perpetuating the 
crying voice or the spirit that, begotten from 

6 



The Art of Life 



God, partakes in God's eternity and infinitude. 
Nay, it tends to abridge the voice's compass 
and curtail the spirit's power to suffer." He 
might have said with perfect justice that auto- 
biography even more than biography gives a less 
favourable impression than that made on con- 
temporary observers by the actual characters of 
its subjects. It may be that a man cannot 
directly reveal himself, and that his autobiography 
is written rather in his less personal books than 
in the book which professes to give his own 
account of himself There are luminous ex- 
ceptions, no doubt, but in a good many cases a 
man's deliberate self-portraiture is both libellous 
and indistinct, giving perhaps the picture of a 
mind occupied with its own past, and reflecting 
its aspect in the solitude of self-communion, but 
giving no true idea of what the man was in 
relation to others. Thus one of the least amiable 
autobiographies is that of Mark Pattison, in 
which, as a critic of the time remarked, he 
stamped with a strange concession of authenticity 
a supposed caricature of himself in a clever 
novel. Yet Pattison was a man of whom one 
of his intimates said, "In tete-a-tete he possessed 

7 



The Art of Life 



in a rare degree what seems to me essential to 
good talk — a vivid consciousness of the person 
to whom he was speaking." And he was the 
man who put the question, " What is most 
worth living for ? " and answered it thus : " To 
deliver one's message." Nevertheless when all 
is said and done, the world would not part 
willingly either with its biographies or auto- 
biographies. The lessons of life are not won 
lightly, and all that is said against biography 
reduces itself in the end to this — that the 
ultimate secret of any human personality remains 
a secret after all observation and all research 
and all expression have done their best or 
worst. 

That there is an art of life which needs to 
be cultivated may be shown by various examples. 
Especially the need is clear when we turn to 
life's most intimate relations. We are apt to 
take for granted that natural affection will make 
them all that they should be without thought 
or painstaking. A man and woman marry ; 
they are heartily in love with each other. What 
more is necessary for a happy life ? Much more 
is necessary. Happiness is neither a vested right 

8 



The Art of Life 



nor a self-maintaining state. What is necessary 
is to make sure that love shall not only last, 
but grow stronger. It is not a matter of 
course that this should come to pass. It takes 
skill and science to maintain life through life's 
various stages, and both the man and the woman 
must do their part. La Bruyere, I believe, never 
married, but the story of a young girl is woven 
through the texture of his life. His ideal woman 
was woman in her early girlhood. After that 
period, he thought that she deteriorated, that 
she did not cultivate her gifts, that her moral 
sense was injured, that she indulged a natural 
repugnance for things serious and difficult, and 
that great beauty did nothing more for her than 
to lead her to hope for a great fortune. He 
believed, indeed, that a beautiful woman with 
the qualities of a worthy man had the merit of 
both sexes, and was the most delightful com- 
panion in the world. But of these there were 
very few, and so he was content to regard woman 
with a kind of fatherly tenderness. The book- 
seller to whose shop he daily repaired to turn 
over the new books and hear what was sroing- 
on, had a bright little daughter, with whom he 

9 



The Art of Life 



made friends. One day when playing with the 
child he took out of his pocket the manuscript 
of his great work, and offered it to the book- 
seller, saying, "If you get anything by it, let 
it be the dot of my little friend here." When 
the girl married, her husband received with her 
a fortune of a hundred thousand livres. Married 
people must look forward to the close of one 
stage of life, and prepare for the other. This 
can only be done by self-denial, by the resolute 
endeavour on both sides to maintain a community 
of existence. The marriage that is truly suc- 
cessful is the marriage where each becomes by 
degrees necessary to the completeness of the 
other's life, and that happiness will grow more 
and more if each grows side by side with the 
other. It is so with the family. Parents must 
not take for granted that their sons and daughters 
will love them simply on the strength of the 
natural bond. They have to win the affection 
of their children. If they do not they will find 
that the children will have thoughts and ways 
of their own into which the parents are not 
permitted to enter. There are some pathetic 
passages in the life of the great scholar, F. J. 
lO 



The Art of Life 



A. Hort, where he laments that his dreadful 
shyness has interfered with his knowledge of 
his children. He was eminently unselfish. He 
would put aside the most engrossing work when 
his children sought him ; he desired to know all 
that was passing in the nursery world. But he 
complained of the unwholesome reserve which 
kept them at a distance, " the main cause of 
which, whatever the other causes may have been, 
has been my own miserable shyness, which has 
cruelly disabled me as a father among you all." 
Many do not strive for the prize as Hort did, 
and they miss it, and miss with it much of the 
best of life. The same is true about brothers 
and sisters. Every one must have observed in 
large families apparently happy together that 
each one lived his own life, that they knew very 
little of one another. To those who do not 
know how much strength and joy can be gained 
by the perfect co-mingling of interests between 
father, mother, sons, and daughters, this will 
appear an unspeakable loss ; but many are ap- 
parently satisfied to share the shelter of the same 
roof, and have very little else in common, and 
yet be contented enough. There are many wives 

I I 



The Art of Life 



who know nothing of what their husbands 
are doing, many husbands who know nothing 
and care nothing as to what their wives are 
doing, and yet they would be the first to say 
that their marriages are happy. They are 
happy after a fashion, but not after the true 
fashion. 

Again, an attention to the art of life will 
help us to make the best of ourselves and the 
best of things. For the sake of happiness as 
well as for greater reasons we should try to do 
our work in the world, and the finely tempered 
nature will never be satisfied if the rust eats 
into the unused blade. By a wise conduct we 
may avoid the lurid lights and the horrible, 
creeping shadows. We shall not spend the first 
years of life in a way to make the last miserable. 
Even the " powerful distemper of old age," as 
Montaigne called it, may not mar our happiness. 
The mere fact of reaching old age is a proof, 
I think, that life has not been miserable, that 
more sunshine than shadow has fallen upon it. 
When we are old we should find something to 
exercise the faculties that remain. The Cum- 
berland beggar had the surest mark of old age. 
12 



The Art of Life 



He had always seemed old to the people in his 
valley. 

Him from childhood I have known, and then 
He was so old ; he seems not older now. 

But the secret of his continuance was that he 
still " travelled on." I have heard of a man of 
ninety-two, whose life had been spent in an in- 
credible round of toil. He made it his business 
when he could do no more to study the stars. 
His last office led him into the open air, and 
his last words were, " How clear the moon shines 
to-night ! " 



13 



II 

That Literature is Autobiography 

The other day I came across an observation 
which set me thinking. It was to the effect 
that autobiographies are a very unimportant part 
of our Hterary treasure. Taking it in the Hteral 
sense, this is not true. Taking it with a broad 
construction, it is so utterly false that it may 
even be plausibly asserted that all the enduring 
part in literature is autobiography. 

This is a bold saying, and I must at the 
outset define my terms. There are many formal 
autobiographies which are not literature in any 
sense ; that is, they are neither sincere nor in 
any way complete. In other words, they are 
not autobiographies. Perhaps the truest auto- 
biographies are those which do not take 
the prescribed form — which are indirect. Very 
few people have the courage to tell the true 
story of their lives. There is a noble modesty 



^ Literature is Autobiography ^ 

of the soul which makes it impossible to draw 
the veil back which hides from the world its 
hopes and its joys, its losses and wounds and 
sacrifices, the struggles, the victories and the 
defeats of conscience. An autobiography may 
be true so far as it goes, but unless it admits 
the reader into the sanctuary of life it makes 
no impression. This is perhaps the reason why 
stories written in the first person singular so 
rarely attain success. To the young an auto- 
biographical novel appears the easiest. In reality 
it is the most difficult, and I doubt whether it 
has ever been successfully accomplished, save by 
those who have directly or indirectly unveiled the 
inner secrets of their heart. Often the person who 
writes it gives no true picture of his experience in 
the world of action or in the world of thought. He 
tries to make imagination do a work for which it 
is not competent. For example, a commonplace 
prosperous man, incapable of any deeper feeling, 
may write a novel which he intends to be steeped 
in melancholy. But the book turns out unreal, 
mawkish, maudlin, describing not a real agony, 
but a dull and dismal languor of weakness. 
Those who have read Lamartine's Jocelyn will 

15 



That Literature 



understand what I mean. When Charles Dickens 
wrote his David Copperfield he told more of 
himself than is told in Forster's three volumes 
of biography, and yet even he failed to make 
his hero vivid and interesting. Sir Walter Scott, 
who in one sense was the most open and in 
another sense the most reticent of men, could 
do nothing with Francis Osbaldistone, though 
he allotted to him the great prize of Di Vernon. 
Still the aphorism of Coleridge, that a man of 
genius is a man of deep feeling, holds good, 
and so every fragment of autobiography from 
the elect, even when it is not meant seriously, 
is apt to be true and memorable. For myself, 
I often turn to Charles Lamb's little sketch of 
himself, and find more in it than in Canon 
Ainger, or Mr. Procter, or Mr. Fitzgerald, or 
Thomas Westwood. Take such touches as these : 
" Can remember few specialities in his life ex- 
cept that he once caught a swallow flying." 
" Stammers abominably, and is therefore more 
apt to discharge his occasional conversation in 
a quaint aphorism or a poor quibble than in 
set or edifying speeches : has consequently been 
libelled with aiming at wit, which, as he told 

i6 



is Autobiography 



a dull fellow that charged him with it, is at 
least as good at aiming at dulness." " Crude they 
are, I grant you — a sort of unlicked incondite 
things — villainously pranked in an affected array 
of antique modes and phrases. They had not 
been his if they had not been other than such : 
and better it is that a writer should be natural 
in a self-pleasing quaintness than to affect a 
naturalness (so-called) that should be strange 
to him." Still more authentic and memorable 
things about Lamb will be found where he 
professed to speak for other people. And so 
I am inclined to think it is almost every- 
where. A writer may appear to be studiously 
impersonal, and yet be personal nearly all the 
way through, or personal at least in special 
passages. It will be found, I think, that these 
passages of personality are the living part of 
his work, giving him his power and influence, 
impressing themselves upon the minds of readers, 
and defying the assaults of time. Occasionally 
a biography will give us the key to much 
from which we have been barred out, or, to 
change the figure, v/ill throw a flood of light 
upon what has been obscure. Even if we never 

c 17 



^ That Literature ^ 

have that key, when we come upon something 
that strangely moves us, we may be sure as a 
rule that the words and thoughts have been 
passed through the fires of life. I might even 
say that in the most ephemeral forms of writing, 
such as journalism, what is most interesting is 
what has been part of the writer's experience. 
I have just been reading a review of Mark 
Pattison's life of Casaubon, by Mrs. Oliphant. 
As an expert criticism it is ludicrous. Mrs. 
Oliphant was no scholar, and she had no sym- 
pathy with scholarship, while Mark Pattison 
was a true scholar. But when she remarks 
on Pattison's treatment of Casaubon's domestic 
arrangements you see at once that she is much 
wiser than Pattison, and if you have read her 
autobiography you recognise that she is talking 
about things she has gone through. 

Another distinction must be made. There 
are two lives — the life of actuality and the life 
of imagination and dream. In many cases the 
dream life is more real than the other. Some- 
times the soul goes back and lives in the dis- 
mantled homes and the long vanished gardens. 
More often it goes forward, and has its home 

i8 



^ is Autobiography ^ 

in the life that might have been, that came 
once so near to being. We can often, if we 
read wisely, find out what came true in dream, 
what was so dear and so cherished that the 
dull grey world of fact was as nothing in com- 
parison. And in speaking about autobiography 
we comprehend the two existences and accord 
them equal rights. Thus it is the fashion to 
say that Charlotte Bronte drew from her own 
experiences, and the commentators try to find 
a basis in her life for every incident described 
in her works. They are wrong in one sense, 
and right in another. Charlotte Bronte's life is 
written out in her work with a rare frankness 
and fulness, but it is rather her life in imagination 
than her life in fact. This is as it should have 
been, for few and sombre were the outward in- 
cidents of her days on earth. It was when 
her spirit took wings that she lived, and lived 
grandly. I have no space to prove and illustrate 
my statement. Let one fact suffice meanwhile. 
If any one has written a story of love in lines 
of living fire, it is Charlotte Bronte. Yet, do 
we find it in her life? If any one recognised 
the sacred obligations of family ties, and suffered 

19 



That Literature 



on their account, it was Charlotte Bronte. Her 
Hfe was a living sacrifice to her sisters, and 
especially to her father. Has there ever been 
any woman of her age and position who sub- 
mitted so meekly to have her marriage put off 
and nearly made impossible by an unreasonable 
old father? She lived the life of humble duty, 
but that was not her true life. That life was 
in the world of love. Her heroines, let me 
note, are all of them quite free from family 
obligations. Jane Eyre, and Shirley, and Lucy 
Snowe, and the sweetest and dearest of them 
all, Frances Evans Henri, may have aunts, but 
they are, so far as I can remember, without 
father or mother, without brother or sister. They 
are free to live the life of love, to say, " All 
for love, and the world well lost," and to fulfil 
the words. Can we doubt that this was Charlotte 
Bronte's dream of life, a dream that did not 
translate itself into what we call actual reality, 
but a dream so vivid that, in comparison, reality 
was faint and dim ? 

Let me give almost at random a few illustra- 
tions out of the many which immediately fill 
the mind when this subject comes up. Let us 
20 



is Autobiography- 



take fiction. I fully grant that for fiction of 
the first class the gift of story-telling is an 
absolute necessity. Nothing will make up for 
the want of it. In this field humour, and 
passion, and observation, and learning have ex- 
hausted themselves in vain, because they were 
unaided by the story-teller's special talent, the 
talent for making a plot, for creating an over- 
powering interest in the narrative. For success, 
a novelist must be able to cover and surround 
the reader with the story. Unless he can do 
this, everything seems to slip through the reader's 
fingers, and the book is merely a quarry from 
which people may steal with comparative im- 
punity. And yet the mere art of story-telling 
is not enough. It may win immense temporary 
popularity, but it does not confer immortality. 
In all the immortal books there are what some 
one calls touches of blood and of the Old Night, 
revelations of the inner secrets and the last ex- 
periences of the soul. Without the personal 
element no work of fiction is vital. This is 
equally true in poetry. I do not believe that 
any command of language or matter will win 
the unwithering leaf Nor will any process of 

21 



^ That Literature ^ 

imitation or assimilation make up for the want 
of soul. The bard is a maker ; by which I do 
not mean that he is a creator, but that he 
works with the materials that his own heart 
gives him. Hackneyed enough, but eternally 
true, is the line Mrs. Browning loved to quote, 
the true Ars Poetica : 

"Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thine heart 
and write." 

That is why so many clever and delightful 
volumes of poetry are bound to perish. They 
may please one very much. I am not ashamed 
to say that I can repeat many pages of Owen 
Meredith, but I know, all the same, that Owen 
Meredith has written nothing at first hand, and 
that he is dead already. 

The same thing must apply very specially 
in preaching. The preacher should not in one 
sense talk about himself. I knew and revered 
one old minister who never used the first 
personal pronoun in the pulpit. And, of course, 
there are necessary qualifications for preaching 
which great preachers cannot be without. A 
great preacher should have certain physical 
22 



is Autobiography 



qualities. He should be an orator, he should 
have magnetic power. Many men have had all 
these, and have attracted great crowds, and left 
nothing to be read. No true revelation had 
been given to their souls. They had never 
entered into communion with God. They were 
no nearer than Asoka, who said to the priests 
at the Buddhist Council of Nice, " What has 
been said by Buddha, that alone was well said." 
But Mr. Myers, in his wonderful poem, " St. 
Paul," caught the true idea that without an 
inward disclosure to the heart there is no religion, 
and that if this disclosure is given no argument 
can ever shake its certainty. 

Lo ! if some pen should write upon your rafter, 
Mene and me7te in the folds of flame ; 

Think you could any memories thereafter 
Wholly retrace the couplet as it came ? 

Whoso has felt the Spirit of the Highest 
Cannot confound, nor doubt Him, nor deny ; 

Yea, with one voice, oh ! world, though thou deniest. 
Stand thou on that side, for on this am I. 

I cannot help adding that one feels this must 
be so in true art, though I know nothing about 
painting. The great artist must have seen in 

23 



^ Literature is Autobiography ^ 

his soul that which he makes immortal. You 
have known a man or woman who has developed 
certain qualities, and the qualities are inseparably 
associated with them. When these qualities 
appear in some figure of the past of which no 
authentic image exists, you wish you had the 
power to reproduce your idea. The auto- 
biography of J. K. Hunter, a book apparently 
forgotten, but full of matter, contains this saying, 
" I remarked that had I been painting a Judas, 
I would have selected a thin-lipped, smiling, 
silly-like, nice man." Such was the Judas 
whom Hunter knew. 



24 



Ill 

The Art of Conversation 

I ONCE went, for journalistic purposes, to a 
well-known palmist. Among other things he 
said to me, " You have no social gifts whatever. 
You are not adapted for society." Lifting up 
his hands and making expressive gestures, he 
went on, " You have nothing to say, not one 
word." Taking compassion, I daresay, on my 
mortified and fallen countenance, he went on, 
" But when you are talking to a friend you 
speak well, very well indeed." I repeated this 
observation to some of my friends, expecting — 
never mind what. They were evidently much 
impressed with the profound truth of the palmist's 
observations — or, I should say, of his first 
observation, for on the second nobody said 
anything — so much impressed that some of them 
at once made up their minds to visit the 
discerning man. 

25 



■^ The Art of Conversation ^ 

From this it may be thought that the art 
of conversation is the last subject I should write 
on ; but there is an ancient sage saying that a 
man may not be a cook, and yet may know 
very well whether or not a dinner is well cooked. 
Who was it that declared that he surpassed 
most people in his faculty of explaining exactly 
how a thing ought to be done, though he could 
never do it himself? I think I know a good 
conversation when I hear it, and so let us 
compare notes about the subject. In the first 
place, a good conversationalist is not the same 
thing as a good talker. Sometimes very eminent 
men can talk most brilliantly, though they cannot 
converse. This is the case especially when they 
live in the country, and do not see too many 
people. Lesser men are very well content to 
listen, and to drink in the wisdom that flows 
from their illuminated minds. It is less easy 
to bear when the man is not very eminent. 
Everybody knows people who talk and talk, who 
might as well be stone deaf for all the attention 
they pay to any remarks of yours. These 
persons are usually enormous egotists, and they 
are never really liked. When you make your 
26 



^ The Art of Conversation ^ 

modest remark after listening to a quarter of 
an hour's speech, and find that, without taking 
the sHghtest notice of it, your companion begins 
another oration, your hand does mysteriously 
move to the poker. I ought to say that there 
are very great men who listen as well as they 
can speak, and they are naturally very much 
loved and admired. Of these the most prominent 
example in recent times was, perhaps, Robert 
Browning. It must be owned that most of us, 
when we get on a subject which we think we 
know, are apt to say too much, and it might 
be wise for us to think, after a conversation, of 
how much share we have taken in it. As a 
rule we should listen more than we speak. 

But when we speak about conversation it is 
another thing. Dr. Johnson, in the Rambler, says 
that the art of conversation is the only accom- 
plishment which there are continual opportunities 
of exerting, and deficiency in it can always be 
remarked. When he speaks he is thinking 
about the man who talks in a large company, 
and whose entrance immediately raises every- 
body's spirits ; the man whose departure is like 
the setting of the sun. Dr. Johnson has not 

27 



^ The Art of Conversation ^ 

a very great opinion of these people, though 
he admires their gifts. He tells of one who 
was for fifteen years the darling of a club, 
because every night precisely at eleven he began 
his favourite song, and during the vocal per- 
formance, by corresponding motions of his hand 
chalked out a giant on the wall. Another 
endeared himself to a long succession of ac- 
quaintances by sitting among them with his 
wig reversed. Another was popular because he 
contrived to smut the nose of any stranger who 
was to be initiated in the club. Another could 
purr like a cat, and then pretend to be frightened ; 
and another could yelp like a hound, and call 
to the waiters to drive out the dog. There 
are, however, those who, by the sheer gaiety of 
their spirit and their radiant good-heartedness, 
are everywhere welcome, and make a dull dinner 
party something very different from what it would 
have been without them. These men are the 
benefactors of society, and it is a pity that 
they are so few. 

I am thinking, however, of the best kind 
of conversation, the conversation between two 
people ; what the Scotch call a twa-handed crack. 
28 



^ The Art of Conversation ^ 

This is almost the culmination of human happi- 
ness when it is at its best. Two are company, 
three are none. It happens seldom that really 
enjoyable conversation takes place between three 
people. One of the three is always more or 
less out of it, and the two others lose their 
pleasure by benevolent efforts to draw him in. 
I have heard very enjoyable conversation at 
very small dinner parties, where the table was 
round, and there could be a general interchange 
of ideas. Still, this kind of talk, even at its 
best, is not like the talk of two congenial spirits. 
Let us think what are the constituents of this 
particular enjoyment. 

Perhaps one is that the two should be friends. 
They need not necessarily be intimate friends, 
but there should be a feeling of sympathy 
between them. There should be the basis of 
a common affection. Without these there is not 
the reciprocal interest in one another's affairs 
which is necessary. Each should be interested 
in the joys and sorrows, in the failures and 
successes of the other. One should be able to 
talk to his friend without feeling that his friend 
is bored, and the sympathy that he receives he 

29 



^ The Art of Conversation ^ 

should be able to give back in full measure. 
Then it is a great advantage if the two are 
working in the same line. It need not be 
identically the same, but it should be partially 
the same. Once more, the two should be fairly 
on a level. The sense of inequality ought not 
to come in disturbingly. One man may be 
superior to the other in some respects, but he 
should not be superior in every respect. Again, 
there ought to be that perfect frankness which 
is based upon firm mutual confidence. Con- 
versation is ruined if you have the least suspicion 
that your companion, meaning to do no harm, 
will repeat your chance, half-meant observations. 
Of what will the talk consist ? Necessarily 
to some extent of personal experience. This 
is not only permissible, but delightful, on the 
condition of mutual sympathy. I have known 
three very clever people who could talk very 
well on almost any subject, and would do so, 
but who never became interested until they 
began to talk about themselves, their books, 
and their children. I have even known some 
who made no pretence of interest in the listener's 
affairs, who never asked any question about the 

30 



^ The Art of Conversation ^ 

home life, who never alluded to anything their 
friend might be working at. They to themselves 
were all in all. But most men want to share 
things, and if you have a friend with whom 
you can share equally, all I can say is, do not 
lightly lose that friend. 

Another element in good conversation is that 
each should have news. That is why it is well 
that friends should be engaged in the same kind 
of work. We all love news, and we like it all 
the better when it does not come to us from 
the newspaper, or when it comes before the 
newspaper gets it. Those who have not much 
brilliancy in expression, who have no great 
command of words, should cultivate news, be 
able to tell in a kindly way what they see 
and hear. Everybody likes a man who tells 
him something that he did not know and is 
glad to know. 

Dr. Johnson says that no conversation is more 
extensively acceptable than the narrative. "He 
who has stored his memory with slight anecdotes, 
private incidents, and personal peculiarities seldom 
fails to find his audience favourable." I think 
Dr. Johnson means pretty much what I have 

31 



^ The Art of Conversation ^ 

been trying to say, but one must pause on this 
word anecdote. The late Dr. Dale once said 
to me that he thought nothing killed conversation 
so much as anecdotes. One man tells a story, 
another man feels bound to cap it, and so the 
thing goes on till the streams are lost in the 
desert. There is immense truth in this. I 
knew a man who, when he went to a dinner 
party, studied beforehand the last number of 
Tit-Bits^ and made mysterious notes by which 
he contrived to recall and repeat the stories. 
He was justly considered an intolerable bore. 
It takes a great deal of skill to tell an anecdote 
acceptably, and in such a way that your com- 
panion does not feel himself challenged to tell 
another, but smiles and passes on. Another 
thing which gives me great pleasure is to 
compare notes upon some book that has been 
recently read or some public question that is 
being discussed. For my part, I care nothing 
at all about difference of opinion, provided it 
is not fierce and intolerant. On the contrary, 
I rather like to have things put before me in 
another light, and some of my closest friends 
are in almost every opinion entirely opposed to 

32 



^ The Art of Conversation ^ 

me. But, as Carlyle wisely said, " Except in 
opinion we do not disagree." 

It does not always happen, perhaps does not 
often happen, that the conversation deepens 
before its end. When it does happen, when 
you feel that the discussion is perforce closed 
at the most interesting time, and that you 
could have gone on for hours, then you have 
been greatly enriched. As a rule, I think you 
cannot have the best kind of conversation with 
the same man oftener than once a week. No- 
body can really talk well for any length of 
time whose mind is not full, and who is not 
always replenishing it. It is wonderful and 
pathetic to see how many fine minds live upon 
the past, say the same things over and over 
again, and become inaccessible to new ideas and 
new facts. None of us, I am afraid, can escape 
repeating. Our few stories will recur, do what 
we please. But it is a very good rule to talk 
out of the week's reading and experience and 
thought as much as possible. A great journalist 
once told me that he kept up the freshness of 
his articles by trying to use for them chiefly 
the books he had just read. That would not 

D 33 



^ The Art of Conversation ^ 

be possible for every one, but it indicates a 
direction in which it is wise to move. Many 
people would be much better talkers if they 
could even slightly enlarge their vocabulary. 
Studied talk never interests ; you must be in- 
terested yourself before you can interest any one, 
but an attentive reading of good books will help 
us to be less monotonous in our phrases and 
adjectives. If any one desires to be brilliant in 
conversation, he is apt to make an end of con- 
versation. As Dr. Johnson wisely says, " The 
wit whose vivacity condemns slower tongues to 
silence ; the scholar whose knowledge allows no 
man to fancy that he instructs ; the critic who 
suffers no fallacy to pass undetected ; and the 
reasoner who condemns the idle to thought and 
the negligent to attention, are generally praised 
and feared, reverenced and avoided." 

To conclude, multitudes have to go through 
life, without ever tasting the real pleasures of 
conversation. They never, somehow, find con- 
genial friends. That is often the great drawback 
of living in the country. You meet pleasant 
people, and can speak with them up to a 
certain point, but you never are able to express 

34 



ijr The Art of Conversation ^ 

your real mind. Many men go through life 
practically condemned to silence as to all that 
is deepest in them. They may not feel the 
want, and indeed, as a rule, people get to 
acquiesce in their circumstances. It is a want 
nevertheless, and the American suggestion, that 
conversation ought to be carefully taught as an 
art in schools and colleges, I believe to be a 
wise one. If we had a rational system of 
education, then we could talk ; we could have 
our pleasant evenings unplagued with Scotch 
ballads, and recitations, and the mandoline. 



35 



IV 

On the Art of taking Things coolly 

My subject may be illustrated by two or three 
anecdotes collected from an essayist of long 
ago. An Irish squire, when his house was 
attacked, admitted his assailants one by one 
through the partially open door, and killed each 
of them with a knife whenever the threshold 
was passed. An old nobleman was assailed on 
Hounslow Heath by a highwayman, who clapped 
a pistol to his lordship's breast, and cried, " I 
have you now, my lord, after all your boasts 
no single man should rob you." " Nor should 
he now," said the gentleman, " but for that fellow 
peeping over your shoulder." The highwayman 
turned, and his lordship blew his brains out. 
On the other side take two stories. Late on 
a winter's night a clergyman heard a tap at 
the window shutter. Excited by the recollection 
of a recent burglary and murder, he seized a 

36 



(|r On taking Things coolly ^ 

pistol, rushed to the front door, flung it open, 
fired into the darkness, bolted his door, and 
returned to his family, little thinking that he 
had killed his housemaid's sweetheart. An 
agitated old bachelor in a retired country resi- 
dence heard a noise in his garden. He sallied 
forth, took one pistol himself, and gave another 
to his parlourmaid. " Mary, I go this way, you 
go that, and mind you shoot the first man you 
meet." The first man Mary met was the old 
bachelor, and the old bachelor was shot. But 
the most wonderful story of coolness I have 
ever heard was that of Mrs. Burdock, who was 
hanged at the beginning of the century at Bristol 
for murdering an old lady. Mrs. Burdock was 
proceeding to the place of execution outside 
her prison, followed by the usual procession of a 
clergyman, sheriff, and other officers. Suddenly 
the procession came to a pause. What was the 
matter? Rain had begun to fall, and Mrs. 
Burdock resolutely declined to move an inch 
without an umbrella. So clergyman, hangman, 
sheriff, and all were kept waiting till one of the 
party ran to the governor's house, to borrow 
the umbrella which was to shield Mrs. Burdock 

37 



On the Art of 



from the storm for the remaining few minutes 
of her existence. 

Some men take their work coolly, and others 
do not. The contrast is between two types. 
To visit one man and observe his ways leads 
you to think that he can be doing very little. 
He has, apparently, plenty of leisure, does not 
seem burdened by his task, does not talk about 
it, is not particularly tidy in his habits, and 
even seems glad of an excuse to escape from 
the routine of his existence. Another man is 
as noisy as a steam-engine. He has everything 
in perfect order, as neat as a new pin. He 
tells you that he does not know how he is to 
get through the multitude of his occupations. 
He tells you that he can spare you five minutes, 
taking out a watch, and unwilling to avert his 
gaze from it. You will almost certainly find 
that the quiet man is the man who gets through 
most work. You can hardly believe it, talking 
to him, but it is forced upon you by the results. 
In fact, fussiness is a great hindrance in the 
way of doing much. The energy that ought 
to be concentrated in putting things through 
is wasted in steam, and through sheer flurry 

38 



taking Things coolly 



and excitement the work is spoilt. I believe 
in method. I also believe in every man being 
allowed to choose his own method. It is of no 
importance, comparatively, whether a man rises 
late or early, what his hours are, how he 
arranges his office. What is important is that 
he should have in his mind a clear plan for 
each of his days, and stick to that plan. To 
stick to the plan is everything. To resist dis- 
tractions and temptations, to set the force of 
the will upon the accomplishment of the day's 
programme whatever may allure, is to succeed in 
doing much. A man who takes things coolly 
will be able to do as a rule all that he 
wants to do, and yet have plenty of leisure 
time. It is difficult to understand why people 
complain of want of time, though it is easy 
to see that they may often mourn over the 
want of strength. A man with physical and 
mental vigour steadily directed to one object 
will never find the days too short. 

It is interesting and sometimes painful to see 
how men take sudden success. The ordinary 
success, where a man through many years climbs 
the ladder one step at a time, and hardly realises 

39 



0?t the Art of 



that he is getting on, is not the success that 
intoxicates. When you have to look down the 
ladder and count up the number of steps between 
you and your start, in order to convince yourself 
that you have ascended at all, you are not likely 
to be overmuch excited. What you will probably 
think of are the extraordinary difficulties of the 
progress. But, in these days especially, it is by 
no means uncommon for a man to spring at a 
bound from obscurity to fame. There is an in- 
evitable flutter of the heart, an inevitable change 
of feeling. No one should be blamed on account 
of it. Still, the suddenly successful ought, above 
most men, to take their success calmly. Some 
of them have their heads turned and show it. 
Others have their heads turned and try not to 
show it. Perhaps the head may be turned in 
spite of oneself, but every effort should be made 
to conceal the catastrophe. The dangerous period 
is in the beginning. When the successful man sees 
that he holds his success only as a challenge cup, 
that his prominence inevitably provokes envy and 
detraction, that a slip is hailed by an envious 
multitude, and that at any time some rival may 
wrest away his prize, he is not in great danger ; 

40 



taking Things coolly 



but it takes time, apparently, for the flush of 
triumph to subside, for the clearing and the 
calming of the mind. That time is very critical. 
It is the time when a man should carefully watch 
himself. Let him remember how soon his fame 
may subside, how unsubstantial its foundations 
may be, and let him walk humbly amongst his 
less fortunate, though perhaps equally well 
deserving, fellow-creatures. There are many 
physicians who will gratuitously endeavour to 
cure the disease of swelled-headedness, but I am 
afraid they go about their business very roughly. 

A much more frequent occurrence is that of 
sudden failure ; and there, too, the prescription 
" Take things coolly " is in place. Some have 
made a certain provision against failure, and have 
so often contemplated it that when it comes 
they are not greatly disturbed. I will not speak 
here of the religious peace which is the true 
fortress of the soul. But not a few in my own 
line of life, though I am afraid they are decidedly 
in a minority, have a constant feeling that the sun 
which is shining upon them now will one day very 
suddenly set. So they are living well within 
their incomes, and making ready for the dark- 

41 



On the Art of 



ness and the rain. It is wonderful that the 
majority take a different course, and entangle 
their whole lives by living up to or beyond their 
incomes, and getting into debt. It is all the 
more wonderful when it is considered how they 
injure the fortunes of those who should be dear 
to them. How much of the quiet happiness of 
the world depends on the careful thrift of self- 
denying men and women who have passed to 
their rest ! Provident people are like performers 
who have a net spread under them, and who know 
that if the worst comes to the worst they will fall 
into a safe place. And I know a few who would 
not be sorry, who would take the failure as a 
release from toil which they do not feel free 
to abandon. But supposing the worst comes to 
the worst, supposing that heavy disaster suddenly 
falls, is it not wise in that case to say as little 
as possible, to measure the disaster as truly as 
it can be measured, not magnifying it, and still 
less minimising it? Honestly confront it, honestly 
recognise all that it means in the present, and 
must mean in the future. Then, when that is 
done, set about repairing it with a brave and 
trustful heart. Don't be frightened by words like 

42 



taking Things coolly 



" irreparable," " irretrievable," " hopeless," and the 
like. We know well enough that after certain 
blows it can never be quite with us as it was 
before them. Yet duty is duty, and if it be done 
faithfully, it will turn into joy, and life will again 
become worth living, and compensations, real even 
if modest, will come for what has been taken 
from us. At no point of his life should a man 
despair. At any point of his life, for what he 
can tell, the best of his days may be before him. 

It is a curious fact that men and women who 
bear themselves calmly and bravely in great trials 
are nervous and fussy about small matters. This 
perhaps cannot be helped. It is a great achieve- 
ment to be cool if you have to look after a 
quantity of luggage, more particularly if you are 
on the Continent, and possess that strange but 
very common knowledge of foreign languages, 
which consists in being able to read them with 
perfect fluency and intelligence, while you can 
neither speak nor understand one word of them. 
It is not easy to be calm, however frantically 
you are told to be calm. I knew an old gentle- 
man who had small experience of railways, and 
was firmly convinced that the time-tables were 

43 



On the Art of 



not adhered to. He thought, not only that the 
trains might start later than the advertised time, 
but that they might start earlier, and made it 
a rule on every journey to be at the station 
at least an hour in advance. I know another 
man who, after much fussing with luggage and 
many losses, has reached comparative calmness 
by making up his mind, and convincing his 
household that he does very well if he brings 
two-thirds of his possessions home again. As 
an old traveller, I rather think that the fussiness 
and flurry at railway stations is diminishing. 
You do not so often now see the look of savage 
impatience, hear the voice of querulous despair, 
witness the prodigious bustle, the temporary 
frenzy, the bewilderment and agony of pater- 
familias walking up the platform, watch in hand, 
and occasionally kicking a favourite dog. I 
think the art of taking things coolly on the 
Continent is decidedly more common than it 
used to be. It is just as well. There is a 
story of an English tourist who, one evening 
in Naples, was hastily jostled by a stranger in 
a narrow road. He put his hand into his pocket 
and missed his watch. Knowing the reputation 

44 



faking Things coolly 



of the people, he fancied he was robbed, rushed 
after the supposed thief, knocked him down, and 
severely beat him. The unfortunate man handed 
out the article demanded, and the Englishman 
went triumphantly back to his hotel. When he 
got into his bedroom there was his watch peace- 
ably ticking on the mantelpiece. He perceived 
that he had himself acted the part of a high- 
wayman, and it may be presumed took a pre- 
cipitate departure from Naples. An English lady 
travelling in America with a quantity of luggage, 
felt her pocket picked of her bunch of keys and 
luggage checks by a man seated beside her. The 
man was the only person in the carriage besides 
herself, and she was afraid to say anything till 
the train reached its destination. Then, when 
the railway guard put his head into the carriage 
and asked to see the luggage checks, she quietly 
pointed to her companion and said, " That gentle- 
man has my checks." The man was wholly 
taken aback. He delivered the checks, and the 
lady's luggage was saved. 

It should be superfluous to advise coolness in 
case of attack. The angry controversialist usually 
loses his case. It may be necessary sometimes 

45 



^ On taking Things coolly ^ 

to strike hard, and to strike home, but this should 
be done after full deliberation. What many 
angry people are apt to forget is the power of 
silence. There is, after all, a strong instinct of 
fair play among our people, though one is some- 
times tempted to doubt it. A man is violently 
attacked, and the attack is persisted in day after 
day. If he makes a weak and angry reply, 
judgment goes against him. If on the other hand 
he maintains silence, the public is ready to sup- 
pose that he has something to say if he cared to 
say it. Of course, there are attacks that must be 
answered, and answered at once ; but where one 
combatant is furious and the other cool, the 
lookers-on are very apt to suppose that the man 
who keeps his temper is right, even though he 
is not. 



46 



V 

Vanity and Its Mortifications 

I SHALL not attempt to distinguish between 
vanity, pride, and conceit. Vanity primarily 
means emptiness. It was in this sense that 
Dr. Johnson used it when he wrote about the 
vanity of human wishes, and I suppose that the 
emptiness in which vanity consists is emptiness 
of the better wisdom. Its place is occupied 
in a vain nature by a senseless interest and 
complacency in one's own self. 

I think, however, that there is a true dis- 
tinction between two forms of vanity. One 
kind of vanity is the vanity of people who are 
so perfectly satisfied with themselves, that they 
never imagine that other people can fail to 
admire them and give them credit for every 
good quality. This quiet, stolid vanity is most 
common amongst people who have never had 
to put themselves to a real test, who are born 

47 



^ Vanity and Its Mortifications *# 

in comfortable circumstances, who are good- 
natured and surrounded by good-natured people, 
who are adequate to the extremely small part 
they have to play, and who become duller and 
more blunted in faculty as life goes on. Perhaps, 
on the whole, men and women of this type enjoy 
as little interruption to happiness as any in the 
world. Should a great call be made upon them, 
or a startling change take place in their circum- 
stances, they are apt to be most miserable. But 
to be thoroughly convinced that whatever you 
do is right, that you are everything that can be 
wished from a personal and social point of view, 
and that you are loved and esteemed by all who 
have the happiness of knowing you, that you 
need to do nothing to vindicate your own self- 
estimate, that nobody ever names you except 
to praise you — this must be in its way a very 
satisfying condition of mind, and it is far more 
common than some writers suppose. A sound, 
dull, thick-skinned vanity gets through the storms 
of life as little disturbed as a pet animal in a 
good house, and gets through in much the 
same way. 

But the kind of vanity with which all of us 

48 



^ Vanity and Its Mortifications ^ 

are familiar is not the vanity that is sufficient 
for itself, but the vanity that needs to be con- 
tinually fed. The first form of vanity implies 
much dulness of faculty. The second, on the 
other h-and, frequently goes with great brightness. 
Essentially, however, the two are the same ; but 
the first assumes admiration, the other wants to 
be sure of it, to have it continually in evidence. 
The vain man of this sort, like the dull man 
of the other sort, turns everything round to 
self, but he has to fight the harder battle 
because he has wit enough to know that 
everybody does not admire him, or, in other 
words, everybody does not know what a gifted 
being he is. It has been said that vain persons 
want the possession of eye and ear — possession 
of eye, perhaps, more than ear, as the form of 
notice easiest to realise and most full of intoxi- 
cating ingredients. Rousseau had undoubtedly 
elements of unworldliness in his character, and 
it ought not to be forgotten that, when London 
was eager to see him, he would not go out one 
night because his dog howled. But when he 
did go out to see Garrick act, and the house 
was crowded because it was known he was to 

E 49 



^ Vanity and Its Mortifications ^ 

be there, he was intoxicated with vanity, so much 
so that good Mrs. Garrick, who sat by him, 
was made very uncomfortable. The philosopher 
was so anxious to oblige the public with a full 
vision of himself that he hung so far forward 
over the front of the box, that Mrs. Garrick 
was obliged to hold him by the skirt of his 
coat, lest he might fall into the pit. It 
need not be denied that vanity of this kind has 
done the world much good. It has prompted 
men to do more than they would otherwise have 
accomplished. Nelson was known to be particu- 
larly susceptible to public recognition and praise ; 
and the great Napoleon was as much hurt as 
Oliver Goldsmith when he found that the eyes 
of the company were directed not to him but 
to a beautiful woman. Some of the greatest 
men are not vain. Scott was not vain, Dr. 
Johnson was not vain, Shakespeare was not vain. 
I doubt whether it could be said of Thackeray 
that he was vain. Dickens, it must be admitted, 
was egregiously vain, and when he unwillingly 
recognised that the glorious freshness of his work 
had departed he was driven into other ways of 
delighting the public and receiving their applause. 

50 



^ Vanity and Its Mortiiications ^ 

One bad effect of the vanity that is always 
most displayed is that it tempts people to make 
adventures in which they come to grief Gold- 
smith might have rested very well on his fame 
as a writer, but he was determined to shine as 
a talker, and though he said bright things now 
and then, it is impossible to resist the contempo- 
rary testimony to his failure. But the most 
pathetic, as it is the most common result of 
vanity, is more to be witnessed amongst women 
than amongst men. It is pitiful to think that 
many are vain of their dress. A woman who 
dresses well according to her means only does 
her duty, but beauty when unadorned is adorned 
the most, and a bedizened old woman is a sad 
sight. A real loveliness of form and feature may 
match itself in simple attire against all the re- 
sources of art and science and splendour, and yet 
easily win the day. The woman who hopes to be 
permanently admired on account of her clothes, 
and who does not cultivate the graces of heart 
and mind, has before her the dreariest of possible 
futures. 

To form a fairly true estimate of one's own 
capacities is not vanity. It does not unduly 

51 



^ Vanity and Its Mortifications ^ 

exhilarate, for the reason that, if a man knows 
what he can do, he equally knows what he cannot 
do. I should be inclined to say that even a very 
slight self-complacency is not a bad thing. It is 
just as well that a man should think more highly 
of his house, of the view from his window, of his 
own sanctum, than his visitors do. It helps to 
make him content, cheerful, benignant. I do not 
admire parents who are unable to perceive special 
virtues and merits in their own children. After 
all, one has to live with oneself A morbid and 
exaggerated depreciation of self makes a man 
miserable and is the cause of misery. It is also 
apt to make him useless in the world. He hides 
his talent in a napkin, and there is no worse 
sin than that. But this kind of humorous self- 
recognition, which has always half a smile in it, 
is usually checked by the discipline of life, by the 
experiences that sadden us and the laws that rule 
us, and is rarely allowed to become offensive. 
Shyness is often a form of vanity, and yet it is 
not the faculty I have been describing. It is 
usually the affliction of young people. They 
know that they are not so foolish as they look, 
that if they had the chance they could do some- 

52 



^ Vanity and Its Mortifications ^ 

thing, and they know also that they have no 
immediate means of making their real selves 
recognisable. Usually this trouble wears off. 
They come to see that the world goes on, the 
sun rises and sets, even if they do make a stupid 
mistake in etiquette, or say something extremely 
silly. They learn as they grow older that their 
seniors regard the young with a vague feeling of 
goodwill, and with very little more ; that they 
make excuses for awkwardness readily enough, 
and that they wait to see what the opportunities 
and tests of life will bring out. Sometimes, how- 
ever, a strange streak of shyness lingers to the 
last where you would least expect it. It is told 
of Grattan, a fearless and even truculent fighter, 
if ever there was one, that he was so overpowered 
with shyness when his health was proposed and 
kind things were said of him, that he could not 
manage to put two sentences together. I think 
it is Mark Rutherford who remarks that journal- 
ists who write in a dogmatic and even ferocious 
and bloodthirsty manner are often in private life 
all that is diffident and tender. 

What are the great evils of vanity? First, its 
almost inevitable mortification. The first kind of 

53 



^ Vanity and Its Mortifications ^ 

vanity I have described — empty self-complacency 
— may quite possibly escape mortification. Its 
danger is when it takes the commendation of 
friends too seriously, and ventures out into the 
open. I know of a lady who was fond of writing 
verses. They were circulated among her friends 
and acquaintances, and passed from hand to hand 
and enthusiastically praised. The enthusiasm at 
last reached such a height that it was determined 
to publish them. It was a little disconcerting to 
find that no eager publisher was willing to offer 
terms, and that the book had to be issued at the 
expense of the fair writer's husband. However, 
even in remote parts of the country the stupidity 
and wickedness of editors, literary advisers and 
publishers is by this time fully recognised. But 
the book came out, and attained considerable emi- 
nence as a collection of unintentionally amusing 
doggerel. The reviewers took some notice of it, 
seeing their opportunity for extracts, I believe 
the authoress suffered intensely, but I do not 
believe that her own estimate of her gift was 
really changed. It is so easy to construct an 
explanation. You have heard of the student who 
went forth from his native parish to triumph in 

54 



^ Vanity and Its Mortifications ^ 

the University. He came back without prizes, 
and there was a little bewilderment at first. It 
gradually leaked out, however, that the professors 
had a spite at him. I have known one or two 
cases where vain people of this kind, young men 
especially, had to work for their living, and in 
one instance at any rate the man was saved 
because the teaching did not begin too late. But 
for the vacuously vain any change in their self- 
estimate would so completely alter their world 
that they would become quite useless, helpless, 
and miserable. So perhaps they are best left 
alone. But the others suffer continually. Minute 
wounds are being perpetually inflicted on their 
self-love, and sometimes the wounds are deep, 
A man without a skin, or with a very thin skin, 
has a hard time of it in this world. He cannot 
conceal his sensitiveness, and so his enemies have 
him at their mercy. This is particularly the case 
in literature. The great critic knows how to 
commend but almost anybody can get together 
a few bitter and brutal phrases. Happily editors 
are less willing to print them than they used 
to be. 

The worst punishment of vanity, however, is 

ss 



^ Vanity and Its Mortifications ^ 

that vain people find the schooh"ng of life so very- 
hard. The victims of an empty vanity cannot 
bear to learn, because they conceive that they 
have already learned everything. They are quite 
insensible to hints, and the wisdom of life is to 
know how to catch up hints and make the best 
of them. Since they will not hear the whisper, 
they hear at last the thunder, and the experience 
is not pleasant. But I doubt whether, as a rule, 
they can be taught anything. The mind reverts, 
in spite of all humiliations, to its old complacent 
attitude. On the other hand, clever people who 
are vain take all correction amiss. The very first 
condition of learning is humility. It is because 
they are humble that children learn so fast. 
They are not ashamed of their ignorance : they 
know that they are ignorant and that they want 
information. They put questions and remember 
the answers : they use their eyes and their ears. 
If they are set right they test the matter as 
well as they can, and cheerfully accept the fact 
that they were wrong. If we carry that spirit 
all through life we shall greatly succeed in the 
true sense of the word. We shall understand 
how almost every book and almost every human 

56 



^ Vanity and Its Mortifications ^ 

being can teach us something. We shall use our 
faculties, such as they are, constantly in the quest 
for knowledge, and so the mind will be enriched 
and the capacities expanded, and a dewy fresh- 
ness will still lie on life even when the last night 
falls. 



SI 



VI 

I 

Some Questions about Holidays 

The first question to ask about holidays is 
whether they are necessary at all. Many people 
get on amazingly without them. I heard the 
other day of an old lady who has a small business 
in Marylebone and never leaves it. She was 
asked by a customer whether she did not some- 
times wish to get away. The reply was that she 
had seen so much trouble and fuss about holidays, 
and had observed so often that they did harm 
instead of good, that she was quite satisfied with 
her situation. The immortal Tim Linkinwater 
did very well in London, and would not leave 
it for any consideration. 

" I'm neither going to sleep in the fresh air ; 
no, nor I'm not going into the country either. 
A pretty thing at this time of day, certainly. 
Pho ! It's forty-four year," said Tim, making a 
calculation in the air with his pen, and drawing 

S8 



^ Questions about Holidays %» 

an imaginary line before he cast it up, " forty- 
four year next May since I first kept the books 
of Cheeryble Brothers. I've opened the safe 
every morning all that time (Sundays excepted) 
as the clock struck nine, and gone over the house 
every night at half-past ten (except on Foreign 
Post nights, and then twenty minutes before 
twelve) to see the doors fastened and the fires 
out. I've never slept out of the back attic one 
single night. There's the same mignonette box 
in the middle of the window, and the same four 
flower-pots, two on each side, that I brought with 
me when I first came. There ain't — I've said it 
again and again, and I'll maintain it — there ain't 
such a square as this in the world. I know there 
ain't," said Tim with sudden energy, and looking 
sternly about him. " Not one. For business or 
pleasure, in summer time or winter — I don't care 
which — there's nothing like it. There's not such 
a spring in England as the pump under the arch- 
way. There's not such a view in England as the 
view out of my window. I've seen it every 
morning before I shaved, and I ought to know 
something about it. I have slept in that room," 
added Tim, sinking his voice a little, " for four 

59 



Some Questions 



and forty year ; and if it wasn't inconvenient, and 
didn't interfere with business, I should request 
leave to die there." 

When one thinks of the uncomfortableness of 
many holidays, of the disappointments in the 
weather, of the ineligible acquaintances made, of 
family resentments caused by overcrowding, of 
the defects of some lodgings and of some land- 
ladies, it may be seen that there was something 
to be said for Tim Linkinwater's choice. I knew 
an old minister who never during his life of 
eighty years took a holiday, though he sometimes 
went away for brief visits to his relations. He 
used to say, " When I take a holiday, I take it at 
home," and so he did. He slackened his work as 
much as possible, and gave his time to the pur- 
suits that pleased him. But I am afraid the race 
of non-holiday-makers is now nearly extinct. 
Carlyle and his wife were very fond of quoting 
the advice once given to them : " Vary the 
schane " (scene) ; and brain-workers know that 
there is need of this. In another atmosphere, 
and with other surroundings, things gradually 
assume their true proportions. We see that we 
have disquieted ourselves in vain. We see that 
60 



ahout Holidays 



there is more pleasure in our lives than we 
had thought. The mind recovers itself and begins 
to act aright, and when we come back again the 
effect of the holiday is to send us gaily through 
months of work which might otherwise have be- 
come burdensome. In occupations which do not 
require any tension of the brain, people may go 
on very well without any holiday at all, but when 
the faculties are strained, it is perhaps wise now 
and then to have a pause. And yet many of us 
get our holidays with so much difficulty, with so 
much preparation before and so much extra work 
after, that we would be willing to surrender them 
if only our associates were willing to. But the 
associates are never willing, and so the question 
may be held as settled. 

How long will a good worker be willing to 
rest ? How long will rest do him any good ? I 
am, it will be observed, speaking only of workers, 
for those who do not work can never have a 
holiday in the proper sense, and can never know 
the full glory and delight of rest. In giving an 
answer to this question several things must be 
taken into account. I have known very hard- 
working men who took as much as three 

6i 



Some Questions 



months' holiday. But then during their hoHdays 
they were not idle. They were, it may be, 
preparing for work by reading and studying as 
much as they could, by meditating in the sweet 
summer air. If you can do this you may 
lawfully extend your holiday. In Scotland 
Professors, as I have frequently said, have 
holidays about eight months of the year — a 
standing proof that even the Scotch are as yet 
inaccessible to reason on certain points. What 
a Professor does with his holiday I have never 
been able even remotely to guess. There are 
legends to the effect that they prepare lectures 
during these months. It may be so. I hope 
it is so. But for ordinary drudges I rather 
think that a sufficient holiday is a month in 
the year, with as many little supplementary 
absences as are practicable. I never had more 
than a month any year in my life except once. 
The exception was a trip to America. It was 
not exactly a holiday, but it was a delightful 
experience. But, taking ordinary years, the 
brain-worker must be very much exhausted, or 
he must be getting weary of his labour, if within 
a month the old impulse to be about his business 
62 



about Holidays 



does not seize him. If he uses the month well 
and wisely, he should find it carry him over 
four months of hard and unbroken toil. I am 
not speaking to the unhappy people who hate 
their work, and to whom every release from it 
is a restoration to liberty. There are many 
such people, and in multitudes of cases they 
are not to blame. They have suffered from 
that saddest of disasters, the being yoked to a 
life-work which they do not love, for which 
they have no fitness, and in which they are 
always more or less miserable. If you cannot 
get a month, a fortnight will do a great deal 
for you. Some of the hardest workers I know 
manage well by taking three fortnights a year. 
They are happy in their holidays ; but I think 
on the whole they are more happy in their 
labour. 

What kind of holiday does most good ? I 
think, certainly not the holiday you enjoy most, 
but the dull holiday. I have greatly delighted 
in foreign trips, moving from one city to another, 
viewing the sights and taking long railway 
journeys. I have also had foreign holidays 
when I had a great deal of congenial society, 

63 



Some Questions 



These, however, have not yielded me much 
physical benefit. As a rule I have found 
myself exhausted when I began work, with no 
spring of physical or mental energy. The 
holidays that have done me good are brief 
holidays, such as I have had sometimes in the 
Riviera, in places where I knew nobody, and 
had next to no conversation, but was content 
simply to be outside, steeping myself in the 
sun and going to bed at ten o'clock. Even 
in the Riviera, which, whatever people may 
say, is one of the loveliest places in the world, 
I have grown weary of the incessant sunshine 
and the tideless sea, and the lazy, weary people 
with their hands " red with the blood of murdered 
time." And yet I have found on my return 
that I could work with redoubled vigour, that 
I did not rebel, that I wakened each day 
happy to think of what had to be gone through. 
A holiday in a country village in Scotland, 
spent in lounging about, varied by occasional 
drives, is most profitable, if only the weather is 
good. If it rains and rains, one may become 
depressed. 

There is another question on which something 

64 



about Holidays 



may be said. Is it possible to enjoy a holiday 
if you are alone? There are friends of mine 
who think that it is not, that you must have 
a companion. At the last moment it may 
happen that the companion fails them, and then 
they are discontented, and go on muddling their 
holiday. In many respects a companion is an 
advantage, Robert Louis Stevenson has told 
us in one of his early books what a complete 
world two congenial friends make for themselves 
in the midst of a foreign population. All the 
hum and stir of life goes on, and these two 
strangers exchange glances and are filled with 
an infinite content. In order, however, to be 
happy with a companion you must have one 
who is thoroughly congenial and sympathetic, 
who understands your unspoken thought, who 
above all is willing to let you have your way 
on the concession of the same privilege. I 
shall never forget a holiday I once had with 
a man of whom I had thought well. In a 
couple of days I discovered that he was a 
reincarnation of Mr. Barlow of Sandford and 
Merton. He was an early riser, and would 
come into my room and waken me. One 

F 65 



Some Questions 



should never be awakened on a holiday. He 
would rouse me and read out of a time-table 
or out of Baedeker. He would say : " If you 
get up directly there is just time for us to 
have breakfast and catch a train for such and 
such a place." Now it is obvious that on 
holidays there should be ample leisure for break- 
fast. Nobody should ever dream of starting by 
any train before eleven o'clock in the morning. 
Nobody should take a watch with him on his 
holidays. He should as far as possible ex- 
perience the timeless state. If he wants to go 
anywhere he should, when the impulse seizes 
him, ask a waiter when the next train starts 
for his place, and take it if it is suitable, and 
wait till next day if it is not A good plan, 
which I have tried more than once with eminent 
success, is simply, when you feel disposed, to 
drive to the station and wait until there is a 
train for the place you want to go to. Mr. 
Barlow also was great upon seeing all the sights 
in Baedeker, and all the pictures that were 
marked with stars. I will not, however, go on 
with this sad story. People may travel together 
with comfort if they will not criticise one 

66 



about Holidays 



another, and if each will allow the other to do 
exactly as he pleases. 

But I am afraid there are not many of such 
people, and so I am inclined to agree with 
Hazlitt in his delicious essay, entitled " On 
Going a Journey." It begins : " One of the 
pleasantest things in the world is going a 
journey ; but I like to go by myself" " The 
soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty to 
think, feel, do, just as one pleases." " Give me 
a clear blue sky over my head and the green 
turf beneath my feet, a winding road before 
me, and a three hours' march to dinner — and 
then to thinking ! " One subject which he 
would allow that it was pleasant to talk about 
on a journey was " what one shall have for 
supper when we get back to our inn at night." 
" How fine it is to enter some old town, walled 
and turreted, just at the approach of nightfall, 
or to come to some straggling village, with the 
lights streaming through the surrounding gloom ; 
and then, after enquiring for the best entertain- 
ment that the place affords, to * take one's ease 
at one's inn ! ' " Hazlitt thought that the 
pyramids were too mighty for any single con- 

67 



^ Questions about Holidays ^ 

templation. One needs instant fellowship and 
support in presence of them. " Yet I did not 
feel this want or craving very pressing once, 
when I first set my foot on the laughing shores of 
France. Calais was peopled with novelty and 
delight. The confused, busy murmur of the 
place was like oil and wine poured into my 
ears ; nor did the mariners' hymn, which was 
sung from the top of an old crazy vessel in 
the harbour, as the sun went down, send an 
alien sound into my soul. I only breathed the 
air of general humanity. I walked over ' the 
vine-covered hills and gay regions of France,' 
erect and satisfied." Never less alone than 
when alone ! Wise and pregnant also are the 
words of the great critic : " Those who wish 
to forget painful thoughts do well to absent 
themselves for a while from the ties and objects 
that recall them, but we can be said only to 
fulfil our destiny in the place that gave us 
birth." 



68 



VII 

" When Three Stars ca?ne out " 

Some four years ago I visited the hill town of 
Litchfield in Connecticut. The scenery that sur- 
rounds it is picturesque, and in some ways recalls 
Scotland more than any other part of America 
I remember. But the associations of the town 
with the Beecher family are a permanent in- 
terest and attraction. Litchfield has been long 
a famous place, and round about it there have 
clustered as residents some of the most brilliant 
people in the United States. Mrs. Beecher 
Stowe tells us of having been repeatedly visited 
when in Paris by an aged French gentleman, 

Count , who in his youth, when his family 

was exiled in the first Revolution, had been 
placed there to be educated for the Bar. Though 
on his return to France he had moved in the 
highest circles, he dwelt in his conversation with 
Mrs. Stowe with enthusiasm on the society of 

69 



'' When Three Stars 



Litchfield, which he pronounced to be the most 
charming in the world. The traditions of that 
old society are well maintained, and yet some- 
how the residents seem strangely unappreciative 
of the Beechers. In fact, America is not nearly 
enthusiastic enough about her choicest spirits, 
though I know that there is a strong impression 
to the contrary. I heard at Litchfield about 
the Indians who had their favourite fishing and 
hunting-ground in the lake streams and forests 
in the district. I heard about the proud asso- 
ciations of its inhabitants with the War of In- 
dependence, but nobody seemed to know that 
Mrs. Beecher Stowe had written about the place, 
both in the life of her father and in some of 
her most tender and beautiful stories. The site 
of the old Beecher homestead is still pointed 
out, but the building has vanished, and the 
church where Lyman Beecher, the father of 
Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher, 
ministered has been replaced by a more 
pretentious building. I should like to have 
found the place where Henry Ward Beecher, 
then a little child, dug for his dead mother. 
He was too small to go to her funeral, and 
70 



came outT 



was told by some of the family that she had 
gone to heaven, and by others that she had 
been laid in the ground. Putting the two things 
together, he resolved to dig through the ground 
and go to heaven to find her. Being discovered 
one morning under his sister Catherine's window, 
di&gi'iS with great zeal and earnestness, she 
called to know what he was doing. He lifted 
his curly head with great simplicity and an- 
swered, " Why, I am going to heaven to find 
mother." Many such beautiful stories are told 
of the place, but I have room for but one 
other. Lyman Beecher's family observed the 
Sabbath in the New England fashion ; that is, 
it lasted from Saturday night to Sunday night. 
On Sunday night the children were allowed to 
begin playing " when three stars came out," I 
am going to draw a moral from this permission. 
It is this. We should begin to be happy as 
soon as we can, not waiting for a great noon- 
tide, not waiting even for a heaven crowded 
with stars. Let us make the most of the little 
we have, be happy as soon, as much, and as 
long as po, sible. Let us begin to play when 
three stars c >me out, 

71 



" When Three Stars 



I have been struck by the curious Hstlessness 
of many people in these days. They do not 
enjoy life as they ought to do. They do not 
care about things sufficiently. It is not as if 
they had much to trouble them. Their health is 
fairly good. They are not particularly troubled 
about money. They have not experienced any 
great disaster, and yet somehow they have lost 
their hold upon life. You cannot interest them 
deeply. There is no subject on which they 
talk with real eagerness and interest. They 
do not put their whole souls into their work. 
When leisure comes to them they rest, but they 
cannot play. See them travelling, and you 
cannot help observing how weary the whole 
business of sight-seeing is to them. Watch the 
languid way in which they take up a news- 
paper or a book. They are bored and blase. 
In many cases this is partly the result of over- 
work, but often it comes from doing too little, 
from a prolonged inaction, which at last becomes 
wearisome, but out of which escape seems im- 
possible. How refreshing it is to see an old 
man full of vitality, anxious to be at his news- 
paper in the morning, hurrying to the station 
72 



came out.' 



for his evening sheet, thirsting for information 
about new books, new movements, new men ! 
Jowett may not have been all that his pupils 
thought him, but I like him for saying that 
the last ten years of life are the best. His 
reasons may not be so good as the affirmation 
which he bases upon them. He says " best, 
because you are freest from care, freest from 
illusion, and fullest of experience." And no 
doubt there is something in Leslie Stephen's 
comment that among the illusions that vanish 
there is sometimes the illusion that anything 
which you did at your best had any real value, 
or that anything which you can do hereafter 
will even reach the moderate standard of the 
old work. Better and healthier is the text from 
which Oliver Wendell Holmes preached for some 
sixty years. Youth, said he, is " something in 
the soul which has no more to do with the 
colour of the hair than the vein of gold in a 
a rock has to do with the grass a thousand 
feet above it." 

I grant that in the happiest lives men of 
any depth must have their periods of deep 
depression, and even of bitter sorrow. No life 

73 



" When Three Stars 



serener and grander than that of Tennyson has 
been lately lived among us, but we know that 
he went through a period of great trial and 
despondency. Like the man he was, he kept 
his feelings largely to himself, and took his 
troubles bravely, and at last won his victory. 
I know that hearts may be quite broken by 
some sudden and terrible blow, and I know 
that the long continued pressure of anxiety 
and care will at last permanently depress the 
energies of the spirit. Yet I cannot agree that 
the Obermanns and the Amiels are wholly 
admirable persons, with their persistent, lingering, 
weary melancholy. The part of the wise is to 
meet trouble with all one's own strength, and 
all the strength one may receive, to welcome 
alleviations, to look out for the light, to hail and 
prize the first ray, and count it a promise and 
earnest of the noon. It is wise to begin play 
when three stars come out, perhaps sooner even. 

We miss our way in life unless we know the 
difference between work and play, unless we 
know how to work and how to play. Some 
people can work very hard, but they cannot 
play. Others can play, but they cannot work. 

74 



ca7ne outT 



The life that is all work or all play is sure 
to be a failure. Perhaps Horace Bushnell put 
the distinction between work and play as well 
as any one. Work is activity for an end ; play 
is activity as an end. Work is what we do by 
a conscious effort of will. The stronger the 
effort is, the harder is the work. But play 
has its spring in some fund of life back of the 
will, and the more exuberant that is, the more 
joyous is the play. And so what is work to 
one man is play to another. What is play to 
one is work to his neighbour. There is no 
need that people should be of one mind in such 
matters. What is really important is to under- 
stand that we cannot live on work, that we 
must have our play, that the savour will pass 
out of the years if we toil too long without 
interruption. And hardly less important is the 
fact that there is no spring of inspiration deep 
enough to keep us long contented and eager 
if we go on playing and have no serious 
purpose of toil and achievement. It is pathetic 
to think how so many people work to get 
rid of work, drudge to-day in the hope of play 
to-morrow, till at last they are incapable of 

IS 



" When Three Stars 



play, and find that the hardly tolerable routine 
of labour is the only thing that keeps life 
from being intolerable. 

And this brings us to the lesson that our 
play is not to be put off too long. The passion 
for money, which may become at last the most 
sordid and contemptible of all, is often respectable 
enough in the beginning. It is a desire to be 
free at last from the necessity of drudging, free 
at last from the irksome labour and the mean 
economies and the stinted generosity which we 
are forced to practise now. Men say to them- 
selves that when they have amassed a certain 
sum the noon will be upon them, and they 
go on despising the starlight and the dawn till 
at last they have obtained their early ambition ; 
and, behold, they are baulked of light. So they 
go on hoping and hoping for the sunlight that 
never comes, working through the darkening 
hours, till the heart contracts and narrows, till 
it is incapable of all the highest happiness. 
There is everything to be said for an honest 
and punctual, faithful toil, but the play must 
go along with it. When three stars appear, or 
even one, we must pause to enjoy their light. 

76 



came outT 



What sources of true happiness we have all 
neglected ! We see it now that the lights are 
gone out, and will not shine down upon us any 
more. What sources of a true pleasure are 
with us yet, if we had but the wisdom to rest 
and enjoy their radiance ! We press on foolishly 
and blindly, thinking that the days to come 
will bring brighter lustres with them. But they 
may not. I have spoken of the listlessness of 
many people who are well off and successful. 
Let me testify also to the wonderful courage 
and patience of the great multitude who have 
little light in their life, but know how to make 
the best of that light. I know men who hold 
their situations by the slenderest thread, whose 
work is burdensome, whose salaries are small, 
who have troubles to meet them when they 
come home. But they have had the wisdom 
not to think over-anxiously of the future, and 
to fasten their eyes on the few bright spots in 
the present. And they are happy and even 
buoyant. Surely theirs is the true wisdom. 
It is they who rebuke most impressively the 
sullenness, the ingratitude, the discontent with 
which many good gifts of God are received. 

17 



" When Three Stars 



I have read that one of the greatest sources 
of moral disorder is an exorbitant thirst for 
happiness. It is true we must not expect from 
hfe more than life can give. Nor should it be 
forgotten that it is very hard to distinguish 
between starlight and sunlight. Many a man 
waits for the sunlight to let his heart go free, 
and when it comes in a victory more complete 
than he dared to dream of, he looks back and 
finds that the starlight that he let pass thank- 
lessly was far better. On this I will quote a 
lovely parable, which will go home to the hearts 
of all who understand. It is a song of starlight 
and sunlight by one who had passed through 
both, and, looking back, knew that the first was 
the rarest and the dearest. 

I came into the City and none knew me ; 

None came forth, none shouted " He is here ! " 
Not a hand with laurel would bestrew me 

All the way by which I drew anear ; 

Night my banner, and my herald Fear. 

But I knew where one so long had waited 
In the low room at the stairway's height — 

Trembling lest my foot should be belated, 
Singing, sighing for the long hours' flight 
Towards the moment of our dear delight. 

78 



ca7ne outT 



I came into the City when you hailed me 
Saviour, and again your chosen Lord : 

Not one guessing what it was that failed me, 
While along the way as they adored 
Thousands, thousands, shouted in accord. 

But through all the joy I knew — I only — 
How the refuge of my heart lay dead and cold. 

Silent of its music and how lonely ! 

Never, though you crown me with your gold, 
Shall I find that little chamber as of old ! 



79 



VIII 
Midnight Tea 

There were four of us round a dinner table 
one Thursday evening. Our kind hostess had 
arranged her guests as in a restaurant. The 
four were two celebrated lady novelists, one 
gentleman novelist, and your correspondent. We 
will call the ladies Miss A. and Miss B., and 
the gentleman Mr. C. The conversation turned, 
as it often does in these days, on the question 
whether people are on the whole happy or 
unhappy. Miss A. resolutely argued that un- 
happiness was the rule. She said that, if you 
watched a number of travellers coming out of a 
railway train, the question was settled for ever. 
Their general aspect was one of unmistakable 
discontent and weariness. Mr. C. took up the 
opposite side. He maintained that life was full 
of small comforts which were all the time 
making for happiness, and that we did not 
80 



Midnight Tea 



sufficiently appreciate them. For instance, it 
was a happiness to waken in the morning and 
look back on a night of sound sleep. It was 
a great happiness to have a cup of tea, not too 
strong, and yet not weak — a nice, refreshing, 
homely liquor, not the pale, straw-coloured in- 
fusion of Lady Dedlock, nor the washerwoman's 
rasping bohea. Then there came the newspaper, 
with something to interest and to talk about. 
A kind or encouraging word in speech, or in 
writing, or in print, revived the heart. A good 
book, old or new, need never be wanting. There 
were for many domestic solaces, and others 
deprived of these were not less happy in their 
friendships, friendships usually more intimate and 
unreserved than in the case of those whose first 
thoughts and feelings were claimed by those 
who belonged to them. Miss B. expressed her 
agreement with this view of the case, but 
Miss A. was unconvinced. At last Miss A. 
declared that she believed that the great reason 
why people were not happy was because they 
had lost the power of falling in love. The 
chief happiness of life was that of two people 
who were essential to one another, and who 

G 8l 



Midnight Tea 



had all the delight they needed, and almost all 
they were capable of, so long as they were in 
one another's company. Miss B. was of opinion 
that people fell in love as quickly and as deeply 
as in any previous period. Mr. C. thought 
that young people were much more considerate 
and balancing than they used to be. A young 
man with a small income may be a member 
of a good club, and have every comfort of 
the rich man at small cost, including that of 
having his letters brought to him on a silver 
salver. He might be inclined to fall in love 
with a penniless girl, but checked himself in 
the thought of the deprivations that would fall 
to him and to her if they were united. In the 
same way a girl might be without fortune, and 
yet brought up in every luxury by parents who 
were in the habit of spending every penny of 
their income. She had no .schooling to fit her 
for the experiences of poverty, and therefore 
she preferred to remain as she was rather than 
risk a change. In this way vehement impulses 
were restrained, and marriage, when it did take 
place, was based upon .something more than 
love, even if love entered. Miss A. acquiesced 
82 



Midnight Tea 



in this, though she would have gone further, 
and declared her belief that, though people 
might be fairly well contented in such judicious 
and arranged unions, they were not true 
marriages, and left those who entered into them 
without the best happiness of which their 
natures were capable, and compelled to seek all 
the time unsatisfactory substitutes. 

I thought of Charlotte Erontc, and her theory 
of life, which will, perhaps, be found more 
clearly expounded in The Professor than in 
any other of her books. She began with an 
intense craving for hapijincss, and she had to 
face the fact that there were many for whom 
happines.s, or the materials for happiness in a 
high form, are apparently beyond reach. They 
are plain, they are poor, they have no high 
connections, they are not very well educated. 
They have nothing about them specially winning 
or attractive. Are they to conclude, then, that 
for them life must be grey and deprived 
of its highest satisfactions ? She refused to 
acquiesce. Her theory was that every woman, 
however plain ; every man, however unfortunate ; 
if they had the power of being true to them- 

83 



Midnight Tea 



selves, had somewhere a fitting mate, some one 
who would see beauty where others saw ugliness, 
who would find wisdom where others discovered 
nothing but commonplace, who, in a word, 
would give heart for heart. Supposing these 
two found one another. The only question 
that remained was a question of ways and 
means. That she admitted might be difficult, 
but if both did their best it was not insoluble. 
To the faithful and the conscientious, inspired and 
gladdened by one another's company, nothing 
should be impossible. Charlotte Bronte was 
not, I think, much of a believer in the delights 
of work. Work, to her, meant drudgery. What 
she liked to think was that, by strict frugality, 
enough money might be saved to allow of 
a comparatively early retirement from toil, and 
a long afternoon and evening spent in blissful 
content. 

All agreed that the chief antagonist of happi- 
ness was bitter and almost unremitting physical 
pain. Three of us also maintained that many 
lives were blighted by a great desolation of the 
affections, though on this point Miss A. dissented. 
She did not believe that in this age the affections 

84 



Midnight Tea 



were so strong as to be incurably wounded by 
any loss. 

After coming home I began to think of our 
conversation, and especially of pain as an an- 
tagonist to happiness, and I remembered an essay 
written twenty years ago by a great sufferer, with 
the strange title which I have borrowed to-day, 
" Midnight Tea." The essayist confessed that 
this title was practically a misnomer. She was 
thinking of two, three, or four in the morning. 
She suffered from one of those forms of illness 
which eat the sweet kernel out of sleep, and whose 
particular pride it is to make the small hours 
hideous. These maladies know the time like a 
chronometer, and in the small hours they hold 
high carnival. But at intervals they have mercy, 
and seem to depart. Well, then, there are two 
friends, let us say, or a man and wife, or a mother 
and daughter, who pass the night together in 
order that one of the two who suffers may receive 
the help which only one hand can give. The 
immediate pain suddenly ceases. Then springs 
up a sudden thought out of the new, sweet peace : 
" Let us have a cup of tea." It can be managed 
at once. The tea is forthcoming, the spoons 

85 



Midnight Tea 



tinkle in the cups, the sweet incense goes up, and 
there is for a time calm and cheer, a soothed feeling, 
a quiet triumph in human resources, a genial 
gleam of light in the long tract of the dark hours. 
There may be no conversation, save that highest 
form of conversation which passes between two 
who, through the love and intimacy of long years, 
understand what each is thinking, and interchange 
ideas without words. Sometimes there is a 
pleasant distraction from the first noises of the 
day outside, or perhaps the furniture creaks, which 
is pleasant when there are two to hear it, or some 
object that has been with you in the room for 
years reveals a something you had always missed. 
A woman's portrait will show you another light 
in the eyes, another curve in the lips, some fresh 
touch of stateliness or of charm. It is altogether 
like an oasis, and it is good to look back upon 
when the burning desert has been traversed. 
There is hardly any such tie between human 
beings as " Do you remember ? " and " Do you 
remember when we had midnight tea ? " brings 
back many softening, hopeful thoughts. All this 
is written for those who will understand. 

I read over again lately the Life and Letters of 

86 



Midnight Tea 



F. W. Robertson, and came to the conclusion that 
the happiest period of his Hfe was the time when 
he was fairly laid aside from work, suffering very- 
much, and with the prospect of death before him. 
That was, I have no doubt, because he had got 
rid of his heavy responsibilities. The men and 
women I pity most are those who, in spite of 
physical weakness and even torture, are obliged 
to go on working day after day, that they may 
keep the wolf from the door. Even this con- 
dition, however, has its own alleviation for those 
who are humble enough and wise enough to seek 
them. But after much knowledge of chronic 
sufferers, I believe they are not unhappy if their 
natures are sweet, and sound, and unselfish, and I 
believe much of their happiness lies in the fact, 
that they are no longer urged and tormented by 
their own consciences to do this and to do that. 
We need not be very sorry for the old woman in 
the workhouse, who greatly desired a message of 
God's will for her, and could hear nothing but 
this : " Lie still and cough." 



87 



IX 
Firing out the Fools 

I AM no pessimist, but I want to " do without 
opium," and to keep my eyes open to whatever 
may pass, be it bright or dark. As to one thing 
we are all agreed. The whole forces of the 
world are being steadily brought to bear on our 
strongholds. Whatever we hold we hold as a 
challenge cup is held. We are in a new century 
and a new world, and the stress of competition 
comes upon us from every side. It follows that 
our quiet and easy ways of doing business must 
end. We may keep our ground ; but we can 
only keep it if we are willing to work as our 
competitors work. Even so we may find it hard 
enough. But any other course makes straight 
for national death. Efficiency must be our motto 
in all things. 

Are we efficient? Most certainly not. Does 
any one who knows anything about business 

88 



Firing out the Fools 



imagine that the business of this country is being 
well managed everywhere ? So far is this from 
being the case, that business men are always 
telling me that, in their own trades, there is 
much shortcoming. There is a slow advance per- 
haps ; a little reluctant waking up ; a grumbling 
admission that things might be done better and 
more briskly and more economically. But few 
comparatively are willing to face the whole 
problem ; to throw their forces with concentration 
and steady perseverance into the effort. A 
business man, who employs more than a thousand 
people, told me the other day that he could only 
count on three or four as in every way satisfactory 
and trustworthy. The vast majority desired to 
get as much money as possible for as little work 
as possible. They had no interest whatever in 
the fortunes of the business with which they were 
connected, and no concern for its prosperity. 
Employers, too, are frequently wedded to old 
ways, resent changes, are exasperated if they 
have to put more energy into their work. I 
know a firm of five partners, and only one of 
them has the least driving force, or the least 
foresight. Our newspapers may scream and 

89 



Firing out the Fools 



rave, but they produce little effect. Employers 
are sullen. Workers, so lon^^ as they can get 
work or wages, are quite indifferent. 

Under these circumstances, it may be worth 
while to consider the American policy of to-day, 
" Fire out the fools, and pay good men hand- 
somely." It looks a little merciless ; but I am 
inclined to think that, in the end, it is the kindest 
and wisest policy. 

" Fire out the fools." In every business 
establishment there are many who are not worth 
their wages. Either they were never efficient, 
or they have ceased to be efficient. This is so 
all over the world. It is the case even in the 
United States. I read the other day a bright 
little article in an American paper, in which 
the writer spoke of youths who despised their 
business, youths who took no pains to master 
it, who were always anxious for a half-holiday 
or a whole holiday, youths who were clever in 
games and learned in sport, but stupid and 
incapable in the task they were set to do. The 
writer said very properly, that these had to be 
got rid of, and that as soon as possible. There 
are also, as everybody knows, men who are 
90 



Firing out the Fools 



efficient when young, but who have grown easy 
and comfortable, and much attached to bygone 
ways. They are always to be found amongst 
the champions of reaction. When the firm with 
which they are connected strikes out in some 
new enterprise, they shake their heads. They 
not only fail to help it on to success, but they 
are a drag upon it. If it fails, they say, " I 
told you so," or what is even more irritating, 
perhaps the most irritating phrase in the world, 
" I always thought so." You never dream of 
communicating to them any new idea. Ignorant 
of the fact that it is only by new and sound 
ideas, properly carried out, that business can 
live or thrive, they have made up their minds 
before they hear the proposal that the proposal 
is bound to collapse. If, in spite of them, any 
new project is made to succeed, they say as 
little about it as they conveniently can. Yet 
they are respectable men in their way, keep 
their hours, do their work in a decent sort of 
way, are eminently well pleased with themselves, 
and would imagine that they were wronged 
exceedingly if they were fired out. In fact, 
they calculate upon being kept in the business 

9^ 



Firing out the Fools 



as long as they can work, and then being dis- 
missed with good pensions. It seems hard to 
fire them out, and yet in the end it might be 
the best thing for them. If every man was 
made to know that he held his position simply 
so long as he filled it efficiently, there would 
be a great quickening everywhere. As it is, 
many men become duffers at forty. And there 
is too much to be said for the idea that youth 
is the qualification for success. But, as a matter 
of fact, it is not so. It is of no importance 
whether a man's hair is white or black, whether 
he was born in the fifties or the sixties or the 
seventies. What is important is that he should be 
efficient. If a man keeps up to the mark of the 
time, never allowing himself to fall asleep or to 
become comatose, he ought to grow a better man 
with the years, for he has the experience of the 
old and the alertness and readiness of the young. 
As it is nowadays, so many elderly people have 
nothing but experience, that they are quite 
useless ; for experience, after all, can only do a 
little, and that little depends on its being wisely 
used. Experienced men are apt to apply their 
experience to the conditions under which it was 
92 



Firing out the Fools 



gained. But now that the conditions have all 
altered, this is plainly fallacious and destroying. 
The new conditions must be recognised, and 
then it will be seen that what would have been 
successful under old conditions will now prove 
an entire failure. We have plenty of room for 
old men like Earl Roberts, and he is not the 
only one. Still, the chance of the old is to 
associate themselves with the young. The 
caution ■ and experience of age, joined to the 
enterprise and audacity of youth, are the con- 
ditions of success. It is long ago since one of 
the first men in the City of London said to 
me that he regarded no firm as safe if the 
partners were all over forty years of age, and 
I fully believe he was right. By the end of 
this century there will be no such thing as 
appointments for life. People will keep their 
places just as long as they deserve to keep 
them, and not a minute longer. As things are, 
we have every kind of abuse. We have in 
our colleges professors who teach nothing, who 
have no influence over their students, and 
who live to abnormal ages simply because they 
have never known what it is to work. And 

93 



Firing out the Fools 



so, as I said, we have in almost every business 
establishment men who exist in the business for 
no useful end ; who draw their money, but fail 
to do their duty. 

The next item of the American advice is 
equally sound, and follows upon the other. 
"Pay good men handsomely." If you fire out 
the fools you can afford to do this, for a good 
man in any business is worth an incompetent 
man many times over. For one thing, he can 
do much more work. He will avail himself of all 
the labour-saving appliances with which modern 
science has furnished us. It is a mistake to 
suppose that discoveries lessen labour. They 
come just when the pressure of work is growing 
intolerable, and make work possible. For ex- 
ample, the system of typewriting did not arrive 
a moment too soon. Business men were be- 
coming crushed with the weight of their corre- 
spondence. The use of typewriting is practically 
a test of an up-to-date firm. If a man comes 
down to his business and laboriously writes his 
letters, he can practically do nothing else. He 
could save one half the time by dictating them 
to an expert typist, and then the other half of 

94 



Firing out the Fools 



his time would be given to other work, and 
things would move forward. In the same way 
there are editors, or used to be editors, who 
practically knew nothing of what their rivals 
were doing. They could not be troubled. They 
fancied that they knew their business, and that 
everything was right. For such people there 
are rude and strange awakenings, and there will 
be more of them in the future. I knew a 
journalist who went to a certain city to be the 
first editor of an evening newspaper. A rival 
had planted itself pretty firmly. This man not 
only did his work as well as he could, but 
when the work was over took a blue pencil, 
spread out his own sheet and the rival sheet, 
and found out what was common to each, what 
was distinctive in each, what were the strong 
points of his rival, and what were his own 
weak points. He set himself to developing his 
own features and to meeting his competitor on 
the points where it excelled him. This meant 
very hard work, but it meant success. Even 
one man of great talent and unwearied diligence 
and devotion will make a mighty difference to 
a business, will alter its outlook, and will to a 

95 



Firing out the Fools 



certain extent carry a large body of dull and 
vacant men upon his shoulders. But it is 
possible to crush him. Even in these days, a 
firm where every partner was thoroughly efficient 
and where every one of the principal workers 
was also thoroughly efficient, would carry all 
before it. Is there such a firm to be found 
in all London ? It is plain that it could only 
be made up by some painful experiments. Until 
we are taught our lesson it is not likely we 
shall try it. When we do try it, it may be 
too late. 

I fully sympathise with trades unions, and 
regard the organisation of labour as one of the 
best guarantees for peace and prosperity in the 
country. But upon one point I would fight 
some labour representatives to the death. Let 
me quote from a smart new magazine, published 
in America, and entitled TJie World's Work : 
" The American working man demands good 
wages and limited hours, but he takes a personal 
pride in doing as much work as he can, and in 
acquiring greater skill to increase his output. 
The British workman has come to take the 
opposite view, and to pride himself on doing 

96 



Firing out the Fools 



the least he can for a good wage. Nearly all 
the British unions limit the amount of work a 
man shall do, and impose a fine for exceeding 
it. Under such a proceeding the cost of pro- 
duction is fixed, and fixed by the unions. There 
is no elasticity. This rigidity and the cost of 
labour, together with the unions' unwillingness 
to use improved machinery, has kept English 
capital from enlarging old plants or building 
new ones to meet increasing demands and the 
new conditions of trade." How far this is the 
truth I do not know, but it is the truth tc 
some extent. Nothing could be more fatal than 
the attempt to crush exceptional ability, and 
to reduce all to a dead level of mediocrity at a 
time when in competing countries exceptional 
ability is encouraged to the uttermost. The 
effect in cases I have personally known is alto- 
gether disastrous. I could mention instances 
where trade has gone to the United States, 
which might well have been kept in London, 
simply because the trades union insisted on the 
dismissal of men who turned out more than 
the prescribed amount of work. What we need 
to-day is to give ability its full reward, and 

H 97 



Firing out the Fools 



this will help to produce more intimate relations 
between employers and workers ; in fact, they 
will be, as they ought to be, on an equal footing. 
No business can really prosper where there is 
not constant communication between all con- 
cerned in it, and the free interchange of 
ideas. 

As the American writer I have quoted says, 
there is always plenty of room for high ability 
joined to entire devotion. Our businesses are 
thronged with mediocrities. A business man, 
when a mediocrity is introduced to him, can 
scarcely ever do anything ior him. Nor is 
mere ability enough. Though a brain fertile in 
practical ideas is very rare and very valuable, 
there must be the power of patient, constant, 
watchful toil to realise those ideas. The young 
man who insists upon regular meals, whatever 
happens, and who during the last hour of his 
days is always looking at the clock, and who 
likes an afternoon off to see a cricket match 
at Lord's, is of no use in these days. He is 
as common as the rabbit in Australia — or is 
it in New Zealand ? — and nearly as great a 
nuisance. But for those who have the quali- 

98 



Firing out the Fools 



fications and are willing to use them, for those 
who are daunted by no toil and no difficulty, 
for those who give themselves without reserve 
to the work they have in hand, there is always 
abundance of room. 



LofC. 

99 



X 

" A Fellow by the Name of 
Rowan." 

I HAVE received so many letters about my 
recent epistle on " Firing out the Fools," that I 
am compelled to return to the theme. Nor, to 
tell the truth, is much compulsion necessary. 
Any man whose lot it is to have continual 
applications for employment must have certain 
thoughts on the ways and manners of the 
candidates for work deeply burned into his mind. 
Without quoting letters in full, I shall single out 
for further exposition the main points suggested, 

(i) Some correspondents imagine that I am 
writing in the interest of employers, and that I 
wish those who work under masters to have long 
hours and be content with little wages, so that 
businesses may be more profitable to their 
owners. On the contrary, I consider that many 
employers are just as incompetent, lazy, stupid, 
lOO 



■^ " A Fellow named Rowan.'* ^ 

and self-indulgent as the worst workman can be. 
They take no real pains, they do not keep a 
vigilant eye upon the details of their business, 
they neither recognise the good workman nor 
punish the bad workman. They are continually 
forgetting and muddling ; they hate to be told 
that they are living in a new world and under 
new conditions, and they fondly imagine that 
what might have passed in periods comparatively 
stagnant will pass now. If the commercial 
prosperity of this country is lost, it will be quite 
as much the fault of employers as the fault of 
employees, and in both cases it will be a moral fault. 
(2) Neither do I wish to see smaller wages or 
longer hours. I agree, in fact, with Mr. Keir 
Hardie, who says, in the New Liberal Review, 
that the true foundation for prosperity is short 
hours and high wages. But I agree with 
important qualifications. The short hours must 
be filled with toil, and the high wages must 
be earned by diligence, quickness, ability, and 
devotion. If a man puts his whole force into 
eight hours' labour he has done quite enough, 
and he has done far more than many people who 
labour twelve hours. You are not necessarily 

lOI 



^' A Fellow hy the 



working because you appear to be at work, 
because you are sitting at an office desk, let us 
say, and holding a pen in your hand, and dis- 
cussing the last murder with some one in the 
room. You are working when you are putting 
the whole force of your nature into the thing 
you have in hand, and, if you are doing that, 
eight hours of it will suffice. As for high 
wages, every intelligent employer is more than 
glad to give them when they are earned. If you 
have a man in your establishment who really 
promotes the prosperity of your undertakings, 
who has valuable ideas, and efficiently carries 
them out, such a man will in no wise lose his 
reward. But if a man who dawdles twelve hours 
a day on small wages asks to be allowed to 
dawdle for eight hours and get high wages, he 
ought to be fired out. Whoever yields to him 
is on the quick descent to ruin and destruction. 

(3) Some correspondents, professing to speak 
from the Christian point of view, denounce the 
competitive system of our day. One writer says : 
" May not the man who fires out the fools prove 
in the end to be a fool himself? If, for example 
we are employers of labour, but bent on producing 
102 



Name of Rowan.' 



the best work, are we justified in dismissing a 
workman on the ground of incompetency, if that 
incompetency is his best service ? Commercially 
and in the light of our competitive system we 
are, but surely there are other considerations." 
This shows that I need to explain what I mean 
by the word " fool." I do not mean an imbecile ; 
I mean a man who does not use his best faculties 
in the doing of his work, a man who shirks, or 
muddles, or idles. If a man is really an imbecile 
it is the duty of the State to take care of him. 
If, on the other' hand, he has abilities and will 
not use them, he is a scoundrel, and ought to 
be punished. I think that is good Christianity. 
There was a certain teacher of old time who said 
that, if men would not work, neither should they 
eat. That is precisely my doctrine. On socialism 
I pass no opinion. What we have to face is 
the fact that we and all the world are more and 
more living under a competitive system, and 
that, until it is changed, we must make the 
best of it. Those who do not believe in it are 
justified in trying to alter it ; but while it goes 
on, no good will come of working it in a bad 
and slovenly way. 

103 



^ ''A Fellow by the %» 

(4) Other correspondents ask why we should 
try to be first ; why people will not be content 
with moderate profits. The question, however, is 
not so much a question between large profits 
and moderate profits, as a question between 
moderate profits and no profits at all. If this 
realm of ours is to endure, capitalists must be 
able to make a fair profit in business. If they 
do not, they will simply invest their money. I 
do not profess to be an expert in commerce ; 
but I keep my eyes open, and I hear a good 
deal. Is it not true that the margin of profit in 
many of our industries is beginning to be very 
dangerously small, that a very little more, and 
the industries will be gone ? I want to know 
how working men are to profit if they take away 
this margin, with the result that works are closed 
and the workmen thrown out on the world. 
Nobody proposes that a capitalist shall be com- 
pelled to go on trading at a loss. 

(5) One correspondent directly challenges what 
I said about the restriction of the output of work. 
He says emphatically that workmen never try 
to limit the amount of work that any of them 
can do in an hour. Well, I meet him with an 

104 



Name of Rowan.'* 



equally direct contradiction. I can quote specific 
instances where the men have gone to their 
employers, and threatened to strike if such and 
such a man was not prevented from doing what 
he was able and willing to do. I have known 
also two cases where the employers have yielded, 
and one case in which the expert workman 
has had to go. And, further, I have cases in my 
eye where the result was to transfer very con- 
siderable portions of trade that might have been 
British to America. But I will quote from a 
really great authority in Mr. W. H. Lever, who 
writes in the New Liberal Review. He says : 
" There is another danger that threatens us, and 
that is the action of trades unionism in favouring 
restriction of output. In the present century the 
most important question will be the creation of 
machinery for the cheap execution of good work." 
Mr. Lever also confirms me in saying that we 
have suffered from the disadvantage of low- 
priced labour, and that in England we must in 
future pay our workmen better, and the workman 
must make his services of more value. He says : 
" America with dear labour can and does to-day 
produce cheap boots and shoes, watches, and 

105 



" A Fellow by the 



many other articles, simply from the fact that the 
dear price of labour stimulated the manufacturers 
of these articles in the States to produce machines 
which would enable them to compete with the 
watches, etc., made with cheap labour in Europe." 
(6) There are some letters complaining that I 
speak of old age as a disqualification for efficient 
work. I think I gave full justice to old age 
when I said that efficiency was not a matter 
depending on the colour of the hair. Some old 
men, like Lord Roberts, are young, and hold 
their position simply by virtue of their qualifi- 
cations. It is " old men with old souls," to use 
Byron's phrase, who are useless. Still, it must 
be admitted, and I hope I take the fact home 
to myself, that nearly all of us, as we grow 
older, become less open to new ideas and to new 
methods — more fossilised, less prescient. This 
should be resisted as far as possible ; but we 
need not flatter ourselves that we shall be at 
seventy what we were at forty or fifty. The 
older men can hold their ground only as they 
give ear to the younger men, and work with 
them, not jealously, but sympathetically. Ex- 
perience, as I have said, is of value ; but if the 
1 06 



Name of Rowan.' 



conditions change, it is of none. Experience 
of old conditions will teach you nothing as to 
what should be done under new conditions, and 
may indeed be very apt to mislead you. And 
so young men ought to recognise the drift of 
things, that drift being altogether against the old, 
and recognise that if they live, they will in time 
become old also, and just as incapable of under- 
standing as their seniors are now. The moral is 
obvious. In future the period of great success, 
as a rule, will not be very prolonged. If a man 
does thirty years' good and successful work he 
may be well satisfied. What he ought to do in 
the period of his success is to live soberly, moder- 
ately, and quietly, to save as much as he possibly 
can ; then, when the time comes, as come it will, 
that his powers fail, he will have something to fall 
back upon. I have seen young men leap into a 
great success. Some of them have been wise 
enough to go on in the same modest establishment, 
and to make a comfortable and solid provision for 
the future. Others, again, as the income rose, have 
moved into larger houses, and forced an entrance 
into what is called a higher class of society. 
They have dropped their old friends, and their 

107 



^' A Fellow by the 



new friends despise them, and speculate as to how 
long they will be able to go on. If prosperous 
young people are wise, they will not, unless 
compelled, go to live in more expensive houses. 
A great deal depends on the rent of a man's 
house. Their children will be none the worse, 
but all the better, for being brought up in a 
simple way, and in time, by the blessing of God, 
they will be able to face the future without fear. 

(7) One correspondent says that, if the fools 
are fired out, they will have to be maintained in 
workhouses. No such thing. The very best and 
kindest way of treating a young fool is to fling 
him on the street. The contact with the pave- 
ment will waken him up when nothing else will. 
The boundless conceit and laziness of many young 
men in our day requires a treatment no less drastic 
than this. I am of opinion, besides, that if able- 
bodied people are to be maintained in workhouses, 
they should be compelled to earn their living. 
That the honest, hard-working tax-payer should 
have to provide money for the support of lazy 
louts is a monstrous thing. There is a great deal of 
mawkish sentimentalism about ; but the sternness 
of life is a primary fact, and cannot be evaded. 
108 



Name of Rowan.' 



(8) I know that these remarks will be read 
with great impatience by many people. Older 
folk will say : " We have done very well in 
the old way, and we shall do very well still." 
The old way answered in the old time when 
competition was very little felt, especially the 
competition of foreign nations, and where people 
of one trade made it easy for one another. It 
will not do now ; not at all. But it is to the 
young I address myself They are going to 
find life much harder than their fathers found 
it, and the only chance for them is to do their 
very best. I have already said that the words 
that have done more harm than any others 
are " This will do." Young men who want to 
get on must never use them. They must 
always be able to say, " This is the best I 
could do." Next to them in mischief is the 
horrible phrase, " Oh, I forgot." The misery, 
the anger, the disappointment, the loss caused 
by forgetting, is unspeakable. You have no 
right to forget. If you cannot remember, you 
must keep a notebook. Mark in it every 
promise you make, and examine it from time 
to time. Again, when you undertake to do 

109 



^' A Fellow by the 



a thing, you must find ways of doing it. Who 
of us does not know the young man who was 
told to do such and such a thing, and comes 
back at the end of the day with a variety of 
excellent reasons for failing to do it ? So the 
day is wasted, the chance is lost. What you 
have got to do is to manage the thing some- 
how. A man goes to get some information 
about another man, and informs you, after a 
reasonable delay, that he took the journey and 
found the man out — as if it had not been his 
business to run the man to earth somehow ! 
I have got two copies of an excellent little 
pamphlet, entitled " A Message to Garcia," 
issued by Smith's Printing and Publishing 
Agency. Every word of it is according to 
my own heart, and if I could I would put a 
copy into the hands of every young man in 
London. Briefly, the story is this : When 
war broke out between Spain and the United 
States, it was very necessary to communicate 
with Garcia, the leader of the insurgents, who 
was somewhere in the mountain fastnesses 
of Cuba. No mail or telegraph message 
could reach him. Nobody knew exactly where 
IIO 



Name of Rowan.' 



he was, and yet he had to be found. Some 
one said to the President : " There's a fellow 
by the name of Rowan will find Garcia for 
you if anybody can." Rowan was sent for, 
and got the letter, started off at once, landed 
by night off the coast of Cuba from an open 
boat, disappeared into the jungle, and in three 
weeks came out on the other side of the 
island, having traversed a hostile country 
on foot, and delivered his letter to Garcia. 
McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be delivered 
to Garcia. Rowan took the letter, and did 
not ask : " Where is he at ? " Now that is a 
man whose form should be cast in bronze, and 
the statue placed in every college of the land. 
This man was loyal to a trust, acted promptly, 
concentrated his energies, did the thing. What 
would the average man have done ? What 
does he do as it is ? He asks : " Where does 
he live ? How am I to get through ? What 
shall I do if he will not see me ? " And 
after all those questions have been laboriously 
answered, he starts out, and comes back ex- 
plaining entirely to his own satisfaction why 
he has failed. This book gives a little picture. 

I II 



^ " A Fellow named Rowan." '^ 

You are sitting in your office with six clerks 
within call. Summon any one, and make 
this request : " Please look in the encyclopaedia, 
and make a brief memorandum for me con- 
cerning the life of Correggio." Will the clerk 
quietly say : " Yes, sir," and go and do the 
task ? Certainly not. He will look at you 
out of a fishy eye, and ask one or more of the 
following questions : " Who was he ? Which 
encyclopaedia ? Where is the encyclopaedia ? 
Was I hired for that ? Don't you mean 
Bismarck ? Why should not Charlie do it ? 
Is he dead ? Is there any hurry ? Shan't 
I bring you the book and let you look it up 
yourself? " He will go off at last, and get 
another clerk to help him, and then come back 
and report that there is no such man mentioned 
in the encyclopaedia, and it will turn out when 
you inquire that he has looked for Correggio 
under the letter ' K." 

Yes, that is the true picture of the average 
type of man as I have found him ; but there 
are " fellows by the name of Rowan " about, 
and they are the saving of their nation. 



112 



XI 

Taking Good Men into 
Confidence 

In two previous letters I have expounded the 
American poh'cy of firing out the fools, and 
paying good men well. There is a third article 
in the policy hardly less important than the 
others, and to this I propose to devote some 
attention. When you have fired out the fools 
and paid the right men rightly, you ought to 
take them into confidence. 

In America I have been told on good authority 
that the gulf between employers and employed 
is far less wide than in this country, and from 
the little I have seen of American businesses I 
can well believe it. If an employer is sensible 
and up-to-date, and if he has a loyal, clever, 
and diligent staff, he will meet them on equal 
ground, and try to get all the help he can from 
their suggestions as to the maintenance and the 

I 113 



Taking Good Men 



extension of his business. Some employers in 
this country think that talking over things is a 
mere waste of time. They say that they prefer 
acting to talking. In my humble opinion no 
time is so well spent as the time spent in 
discussing business with capable and friendly 
helpers. In fact, if a man does not deserve 
to be consulted he ought not to be employed. 
The great and serious mistakes in any business 
are usually made because there has not been 
sufficient all-round discussion. Discussion, to be 
worth anything, must not be hurried. When 
one of the parties to a discussion is taking 
out his watch every five minutes, it is better he 
should go at once. To look upon a project in 
all the possible lights, to provide against the 
dangers, to take hold of all the chances, needs 
much thinking, and the thinking cannot all be 
done by one brain. There are men who are 
not worth consulting. They cannot teach 
because they cannot learn. I have known even 
young men whose brains seemed to be cast in 
iron. They had learnt one way of doing a 
thing, and they could not change it. They 
could not bring their minds into touch with 
114 



into Confidence 



any new methods. They listened stolidly or 
with ill-concealed impatience to any hints that 
might be given to them. Hints had to be 
thrown into the form of commands before they 
were carried out. When it comes to that, 
mischief is close at hand, for an assistant does 
not really assist if he takes orders that he does 
not believe in and hardly understands. Such a 
man is not a man to carry the orders out. I 
would have free discussion between flexible, 
sensible men. Let each state his case to the 
other till one has convinced the other. Then 
there is room for satisfaction, then there is 
hope for success. If the difference is irrecon- 
cilable after a good talk, then I should say post- 
pone a decision, let both parties think over the 
matter and resume the discussion, and it will 
turn out that the way is clear. In many 
businesses, I am afraid, there is no such thing 
as this kind of profitable thrashing out of sub- 
jects. Employers are distant. They give their 
orders, and expect to see them carried out. These 
orders would have been far wiser if they had 
been the result of conversation, and they would 
have been executed with far greater efficiency. 



Taking Good Men 



Some employers, again, consider that any 
suggestion is little short of an insult. They 
take the " mind your own business " attitude, 
and the resull is that nothing is said to them 
by men who care for their interests, and know 
that things are going wrong which might easily 
be put right. One great difiference between the 
wise employer and the foolish [is the way in 
which each receives a new idea. The wise 
employer knows perfectly well that everything 
must begin with an idea. Unless ideas are 
brought into a business it must first become 
stationary, then go back, and at last collapse. 
So he receives every idea with respect and 
welcome, gives it the most earnest consideration, 
looks at it from every point of view, and never 
dismisses it until he is certain that it is im- 
practicable. I know men in London who have 
made immense fortunes lately, and who might 
very well trust to their own brains for future 
developments. These men are the men who 
are always on the watch for ideas, who will 
give an audience to a man with no credentials, 
who will hear him out, and who will talk over 
his plan if it commends itself, and treat him 

ii6 



into Confidence 



fairly. In fact, a man with ideas will, as a 
rule, be made far more welcome by a really 
great firm than by one which is small and 
diminishing. I have been present at conferences 
in American publishing houses, and have admired 
the frankness with which every one spoke. All 
were speaking on a level. Every thought thrown 
out was carefully discussed. There was welcome 
for each new project, and if on consideration 
the project was condemned, no offence was felt ; 
in fact, the originator, after the talk, was some- 
times the first to reject his own notion. Nobody 
but a fool would feel any offence because his 
idea was rejected. But the true cause of 
offence is not the rejection of an idea, but the 
rejection of it without careful consideration and 
discussion. It is of no use in these days to 
sit up aloft and to imagine that anything can 
be kept secret. As a matter of fact, I doubt 
very much whether there can be such a thing 
as secrecy in business establishments. In my 
view there ought to be no attempt at secrecy 
as between the principals and at least the chief 
assistants. There should be mutual confidence, 
mutual aid, mutual conference. What a strength 

117 



Taking Good Men 



it gives to the strongest man, if he has with 
him the thoughts, the energies, and the plans 
of competent fellow-workers ! It is in this way 
that leaks are stopped. It is in this way that 
the machinery is made to go smoothly and 
efficiently. It is in this way that the path of 
progress opens up, and the bugbear of competition 
ceases to terrify. 

I will conclude with two counsels which 
deserve the careful attention of young workers. 
In the first place, in order to gain and keep 
confidence, you must show that you are worthy 
of it. In the office there may be the most 
unreserved frankness between fellow-labourers, 
but outside of it nothing ought to be said. You 
must learn to keep a secret. Depend upon it, if 
you fail in this you will be found out. Indiscre- 
tion in talking has done as much harm to young 
men as anything else in the world. The fact 
that you are trusted ought to make you trust- 
worthy. In the second place, the more heart 
you put into your work the more joy you will 
get from it. Let it not be supposed that the 
happy worker is the worker who shirks his task. 
Your task will become hateful to you unless you 

ii8 



into Confidence 



can take an honest pride in it. When you are 
doing your utmost, putting all your force into the 
service, you are happy in that consciousness of 
duty well done which is one of the sweetest 
things on earth. Never mind whether you make 
much money or not. That is not the first thing. 
The first thing is to be true, to labour with a 
sweet, composed, invincible energy till you love 
your work and rejoice in your work. That, no 
doubt, is the true path to what people call 
success, but I should much rather say that it is 
in itself success. Some people write that success 
is not a thing after which Christians should strive. 
It all depends upon what you mean by the word. 
Christians are not to set their hearts on the 
miserable ambition to create a great fortune. 
That is often success in the world, but failure 
and death to the soul. But Christians are to 
aim day by day at the clean, conscientious, 
thorough fulfilment of the work appointed them. 
They are to aim at faithfulness, at punctual, 
critical, scrupulous virtue. Is there anything 
more to be prized than that ? As a matter of 
fact, the world does prize it, but whether the 
world prizes it or not, it is still the duty of the 

119 



^ Good Men as Confidants ^ 

Christian, and the Christian ought not to be a 
worse man of business than the man who is not 
a Christian, but in the true sense a better man 
of business, giving nothing that is not his best, 
and working at all times in the eye of the great 
Taskmaster and Ruler. 



1 20 



XII 
The Sin of Over- Work 

There is such a sin as that of being over- 
busy. I do not think it is a very common 
form of transgression, but it undoubtedly exists. 
Its allurements are often such as tempt men 
of high character and motives, though sometimes 
they are sordid enough. But I do not mean to 
speak of those who make haste to be rich, who 
are fevered and consumed by avarice. I am 
speaking rather of those who wish to do what 
they can in this world, who are conscious that the 
time is short and shortening, and who desire that 
what remains of it should be turned to the best 
account. Such people need to be reminded that 
the half may be more than the whole, and that 
there is serious hazard of spoiling everything by 
over-eagerness, by reckless labour, and by the 
folly which refuses to recognise that there are 

121 



^ The Sin of Over- Work ^ 

very strict and definite limits which no man may 
with impunity transgress. 

Some men have pushed those h'mits very far 
away. No Hfe fascinates me more than that of 
Leonardo da Vinci. I often gaze at the portrait 
of him prefixed to Mr. Hamerton's Intellectual 
Life. There was nothing almost that this wonderful 
man could not do. He was great alike in intellect, 
in feeling, and in physique. A sublime painter, 
he was also a sculptor, an architect, a musician, 
and a poet. In almost every department of 
science he threw out hypotheses and speculations, 
some of them wonderfully penetrating and pro- 
phetic. He was a first-class civil and military 
engineer. There was no personal accomplishment 
of which he was not a master. He excelled 
in dancing, in horsemanship, and especially in 
fencing, an art about which he was the first to 
write. He was so strong that he could bend a 
horseshoe double, and yet such delicacy went with 
his strength that his face is one of the most 
winning in the world. His nature was large, 
sympathetic, and disinterested. He used to buy 
caged birds that he might have the pleasure of 
giving them their liberty. Though calmly con- 
122 



^ The Sin of Over- Work ^ 

fident of his real powers, he was very humble, and 
at the close of his vast achievements he professed 
himself deeply dissatisfied with his own work. 
When, in his thirtieth year, he came to seek his 
fortune at Milan, he wrote a letter to the then 
reigning Duke, in which he said : " I can carry 
through every kind of work in sculpture in clay, 
marble, and bronze ; also in painting I can exe- 
cute everything that can be demanded as well 
as any one whosoever." This was nothing more 
than the simple truth, and yet he had the yearn- 
ing of all genius after something higher than it 
can ever attain, and in an epitaph written for him 
during his life by a friend of his, and apparently 
under his own inspiration, he styled himself, " The 
admirer of the ancients and their grateful disciple." 
He added : " One thing has been wanting to me — 
their science of proportions ; I have done what I 
could. Let posterity pardon me." To lead such 
a life as that of da Vinci, a union of physical, 
intellectual, and moral strength is needed such 
as may never come again in the history of man- 
kind. But most people feel, even when they 
judge most humbly of their own powers, that by 
method, by diligence, by purpose, they might do 

123 



^ The Sin of Over-Work ^ 

a great deal more than they have been doing. 
They also think that it is possible not to wither 
and decline as life goes on, but to subjugate new 
provinces year after year, to create fresh interests 
in life, that so the powers may not shrink and 
dwindle, but rather expand. In such thoughts 
and feelings there is certainly nothing dis- 
honourable. But again, I say, that the wise 
man will bow to the fact of limitation, and 
will in this way do the best of which he is 
capable. 

There is, to begin with, the fact that no man 
can do well more than a definite quantity of work. 
Work to be done well requires to be done at 
moderate speed. Sometimes a careful toiler will 
be astonished at the excellence of what he accom- 
plishes quickly on a sudden call. But he will be 
most foolish to count upon this. It is no doubt 
correct to say that to some kinds of work over- 
much care may be given, but generally speaking, 
the old criticism holds good : " This work would 
have been better if more pains had been given to 
it." So I say there is a work for each of us in 
life to which we should rise in the morning with 
our first fresh thoughts full of it, which we should 
124 



^ The Sin of Over- Work ^ 

leave at night with our thoughts Hngering around 
it, work which we love, and of which we are 
proud, and which we can own before men. There 
is a strict limit to our power of doing such work, 
and we shall do well to respect the limit. If we 
crowd in other tasks, everything becomes muddled 
and huddled. Life grows peaceless, without satis- 
faction, or comfort, or rest. Concentration is 
undoubtedly the rule for commonplace people if 
they are to succeed in this world. 

It may be doubted whether we have a right 
to sacrifice life to the work of life. Life, it has 
been said, is not for working, neither is life for 
learning, but learning and working are for life. 
A man is so eager in pursuit of his toil that he 
practically sacrifices everything to it. He has no 
leisure. He scarcely knows his own children — at 
least, with any degree of intimacy. He has no 
time to trim the lamp of friendship. In the life 
of the great critic Ste. Beuve, we read that he 
surrendered everything to his work. No influence 
was allowed to interfere with the distinctness and 
truthfulness of his impressions. During a large 
part of his career he cultivated no intimacies. He 
even laid upon the altar all his early friendships. 

125 



^ The Sin of Over-Work ^ 

His haunting dread was that he might have 
to part with his intellectual youth. The last 
period of his career was lonely and dark. He 
suffered from a hopeless and distressing disease, 
which he bore with the greatest calmness, con- 
tinuing his critical v/riting to within a fortnight of 
his calamitous death. There was a great deal of 
kindness in his criticisms, though I do not forget 
such papers as that on Lamartine in the first 
volume of the Causeries. And yet perhaps he 
would have lived longer and would have been 
greater, if he had surrendered himself more freely 
to the claims of humanity. Admitting everything 
that can be said in his praise, his large and 
catholic judgment, his boundless curiosity, his 
determined attempt to purify his inner conscious- 
ness, it may well be argued that he would have 
been greater as a man and greater as a critic if he 
had been less hard, less impartial, more loving, 
and, if you insist upon the word, more foolish. 
The weakness of his personal attachments has 
already chilled his writing, even as it darkened 
his life. An excessive restlessness and activity 
prevents the best fruit of the mind from ripening. 
The great preacher must not be too much in 
126 



^ The Sin of Over- Work ^ 

railway trains. He must not consider that a 
morning in his study is wasted if he has not been 
able to put a line upon paper. Quiet meditation 
will yield its result sooner or later to the patient. 
Let us not watch the clock too eagerly. I read 
with delight Thoreau's vindication of his days of 
reverie which his fellow-townsmen thought so idle. 
" My days," said he, " were not days of the week 
bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were 
they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking 
of a clockr And the best thing I know about 
Rousseau is that, when he was modestly provided 
for, he got rid of his watch, with the singular and 
joyful reflection that he would never again need 
to know what time it was. 

There are people who cannot be condemned 
for doing too much at their business, but who 
allow the unpaid work done in the margin of 
their lives to engross them unduly. One of the 
most honourable and hopeful things to be noticed 
in London life is the way in which many hard- 
working City people devote themselves to religious 
work in the hard-earned leisure of their evenings. 
I know many who after days of stress and strife 
go cheerfully to philanthrophic and religious 

127 



^ "The Sin of Over- Work ^ 

meetings. Some of the ablest business men 
of the day are serving the Churches in this 
fashion, and find their delight in doing it. 
With this nobody can find any fault, provided 
other claims are duly answered. But a phrase 
I once heard rings in my ears — " The man 
who was too busy to do his duty." It is no 
excuse for a business man that he serves his 
Church well, if he serves his employer ill. And 
here, too, there is a danger of letting the members 
of a household drift apart, a danger very real in 
the London life of busy and engrossed evenings. 
The first duties are to business and to home. 
The other duties, however sacred they may be, 
must come after. I have no patience with women 
who are too busy to do their duty, women who 
are great in philanthropic and social work, but 
who are too busy to look after their husbands 
and their children. The wife's kingdom must be 
the home, and her life is a failure and a mistake 
if the home is unhappy, no matter how much she 
does for liberty, for progress, even for Christianity. 
Charles Dickens never did better service than 
when he made this clear to the dullest, by such 
pictures as that of Mrs. Jellaby. We are wisest 
128 



-^ The Sin of Over-Work ^ 

and happiest, and tread most surely in the way of 
Hfe, when we do well the work allotted to us, when 
we find time for the home, when we strengthen 
the ties that bind us to our friends. The place 
for us is, generally speaking, the place where we 
are. Miss Monflathers severely rebuked Little 
Nell for being a waxwork child. "Don't you feel 
how naughty it is," said Miss Monflathers, " to be 
a waxwork child, when you might have the proud 
consciousness of assisting to the extent of your 
infant powers the manufactures of your country ; 
of improving your mind by the constant con- 
templation of the steam engine, and of earning 
a comfortable and independent subsistence of 
from 2s. 9d. to 3s. a week ? " Good Charles 
Dickens did much to laugh this nonsense out of 
the world. Very few of us after a certain stage 
in life can change our place, and if we are 
miserable in the place, there is a probability, and 
more than a probability, that we have not done 
in it what we should have done, that we have not 
put heart and soul into that which had the first 
claim upon us. We may have been lazy, and that 
is far the likeliest thing, but there is just a chance 
that we may have been too busy to do our duty. 

K 129 



XIII 
Samuel 

To prevent misapprehension, let me say at once 
that this letter is not an article rejected by the 
Encyclopazdia Biblica. It refers to my Persian 
cat, Samuel, who has brightened our house now 
for about ten years, 

Samuel came to us as a kitten from a 
village in Surrey. He is only half a Persian, 
but in my opinion half-Persians are the best 
of cats. They are often magnificently coloured 
— Samuel's rich black and yellow cannot 
be surpassed — and they have the inestimable 
advantage of being healthy and robust. He is 
a large cat, but there are larger, though I have 
never seen one more beautiful. I quite admit 
that his intellect is not remarkable. He is not, 
so to speak, an eminent cat, though, as will be 
seen, he sometimes gives us a surprise. That 
some cats do wonderful things is quite certain. 
130 



^ Samuel ^ 

Sam Slick's cat was fond of the library, because 
there was a snug carpet there, and he used to 
wait for the library bell, follow the maid upstairs, 
and get in. I myself once had a cat in the 
country, which used to get in by climbing up 
to the latch of the kitchen door, and putting 
her paw upon it so that it rattled. But it must 
be admitted generally regarding cats, Persian 
and half-Persian, that their intellects, though 
sound, are somewhat slow. 

What are the reasons that make the com- 
panionship of the cat so comforting ? First, I 
should put their truly Oriental character and 
their love of Nirvana. I have read that the 
Romans could never tame cats, which was no 
doubt one of the reasons for their decline and 
fall. The Egyptians, as everybody knows, made 
a great deal of them, and they were a wonderful 
people ; but I believe in Europe they first 
appeared as domesticated animals in Constanti- 
nople. If this is true, it is just what one might 
expect, for cats have much the spirit of the East. 
Philosophers have puzzled a great deal as to what 
Nirvana means, but, if they were to watch Samuel 
for an hour, they would understand the delicious 



^ Samuel ^ 

state in which it is possible to be nine-tenths 
asleep, and to use the remaining tenth of one's 
self in realising the pleasure of rest. Most 
attractive and Oriental also are their exquisite 
grace, their stillness and sureness of movement, 
their style, so to speak. Some of them are 
unduly ambitious and come to evil ends, but 
Samuel is not a cat of that sort. In his early 
years he used to cross the road occasionally and 
visit the house of Sir Walter, where I believe the 
servants were kind to him. But now for years 
he has strictly confined himself day and night 
to our house and small garden. He has very little 
curiosity, but when a new room was added to 
the house he showed great interest and examined 
every corner of it carefully, and I think he 
has been over every room of the house in the 
same way, though habitually he frequents but two. 
Another reason for liking the companionship 
of cats is that they are affectionate. It is 
often said that they care for places only, 
and not for persons, or that, if they do care 
for persons, it is merely because they associate 
certain persons with certain comforts. No one 
who has studied cats will believe this. Samuel 
132 



^ Samuel ^ 

is anything but demonstrative, but he has 
distinct likes and dislikes. When the boy was at 
home, Samuel was wont to visit him every 
morning and creep into his bed to be stroked, 
and trot after him down to breakfast. When 
the little lad went to school the cat was for a 
time inconsolable, searching for him all over the 
house, and mewing his discontent. When his 
friend came back again Samuel received him with 
a rapturous welcome. Sometimes when they are 
all out of the house, he comes up to my study, and 
it takes a great deal of caressing to quiet him. 
As a rule he does not like the study. The move- 
ment of books very much disturbs his comfort. 
As for strangers, he discriminates very sharply. 
He hates people who rush at him, and he must 
be courted in the old-fashioned, eighteenth- 
century style. Two or three times he has shown 
extraordinary partialities. One beautiful lady, 
who sometimes honours us with a visit, rouses him 
to the loudest demonstrations of approval. For 
some other people, again, even people who like 
cats, he shows a curious distaste. In the Surrey 
house, where we used to live at intervals, there was 
an immense and dignified cat, called Thomas. 



^ Samuel ^ 

He was originally wild, but was brought into the 
house and tamed. A more undemonstrative cat I 
have never known. It was very difficult to induce 
him to purr, though when I was writing he would 
sometimes come upon the table and be very 
cordial. Once upon a time, however, his master 
had a severe illness, and was confined to his 
bedroom for four months. The poor creature 
missed him, and dimly conceiving that it was his 
duty to protect him, went up to the room and 
established himself there, scarcely leaving his 
master's side day or night till he was better and 
up again. Once I went to see Thomas, with a 
distinguished novelist, who is a very big man. 
The novelist immediately stroked him in a peculiar 
way, and the animal seemed to waken up and 
become quite enthusiastic. My friend explained 
to me that there was a way of stroking cats, but 
declined to say anything further. Samuel is very 
fond of attention and very jealous, and these 
characteristics are common to most cats. True, 
they sometimes make great friends of dogs, though 
I always think that the cat is overshadowed by 
the dog, just as a girl is kept down by a brilliant 
and loquacious brother. Sometimes, too, they are 



^ Samuel ^ 

friendly with other cats, especially when they 
begin life together. Samuel, however, objects to 
any companion. We have a dog in Scotland, 
whom we should be very glad to have here, but 
none of us would think of hurting Samuel's 
feelings. Once, greatly daring, we brought a 
kitten, William, to share his room, but his un- 
feigned misery, a misery which changed his whole 
appearance, was too much for us, and William had 
to go. Cats are very kind to children, but they 
dislike babies in the early stage. Samuel likes to 
be talked about. If he is neglected he will roll him- 
self on the hearthrug to attract attention. When 
he is spoken to, or when he hears his name in a 
conversation, he shows manifest satisfaction. 

In my opinion the great charm of cats has 
never been properly noticed. It is their purring. 
What can be more restful than to listen to the 
loud purring of a cat ? What can be more in- 
structive ? There you see pessimistic theories 
rebuked. Here is one creature in the world 
heartily and thoroughly content. You know that 
there are hundreds of thousands like him, and 
begin to suspect, if you are in the dumps, that 
you are disquieting yourself in vain, or at least, 



%» Samuel ^ 

that things will go better yet. I am persuaded 
that it is this pleasing habit that has made cats 
so popular. I wish it were more common in 
superior beings. What misery is made in human 
life by the detestable habit of grumbling. No 
wonder that the early books of the Bible should 
denounce so bitterly the murmuring of the 
Israelites. Murmuring just means grumbling. 
The evil that cursed the first ages of the world 
curses the last. One should at least be able to 
refrain from giving himself tongue. If he does, 
he makes his trouble far worse, and he loads the 
life of other people, who are just able to go on 
and no more. On the other hand, there are 
plenty of people who do not grumble, but who 
never purr. Purring is not bragging. Purring 
is an expression of gratitude and content. There 
are many hard-working folks, wives and mothers 
especially, who keep toiling all the time and 
never get a word of thanks. How different their 
lives would be if their husbands would purr when 
they came home ! And why should wives not 
purr also, when it is possible to do so ? Perhaps 
if they purred at a kind word they would hear 
more such words. 
136 



^ Samuel ^ 

Samuel prefers to stay out at night, though he 
never goes beyond the gate. When I come home 
late he always rushes to me, rubs himself against 
me, and purrs most cordially. He expects to be 
caressed, and then he retires to his couch. I do 
not wonder that the old woman in Miss Wilkins' 
charming story had such comfort in her cat, 
William, her only companion. It seemed to her 
that, when William was lost, everything had gone 
with him. It was no use to go to a prayer- 
meeting or to church. The alleviation that made 
life tolerable had been taken away. When it was 
found that William had hidden away in a cellar 
and was still alive, how great was the revulsion ! 

And now to finish this letter. I should not 
dare to send the remaining paragraph even to 
the Spectator^ and I am by no means certain that 
you will insert it. But it is a fact that on 
reading certain minor poets to Samuel I have 
found the intelligent creature show distinct signs 
of amusement. More than this, I tried him 
lately with some of our Laureate's laborious 
trash about the union between England and 
America. After hearing two stanzas he delibe- 
rately left the room. 



XIV 

How to Remember and how to 
Forget. 

I RECEIVE many letters from persons who are 
anxious to strengthen their memory. Whenever 
memory systems are advertised, there are anxious 
souls who fervently hope they have found the 
thing they have long been seeking. You do 
not often hear people complaining very seriously 
about their memories, but it is clear to me that 
there are not a few who in secret are much 
exercised on the point. There are others who 
desire to forget. It may be worth while to put 
down a few suggestions on both subjects. 

As to memory systems I have no personal 
experience, but I know that some are genuine 
and have been found very useful. They might, 
I should think, be specially useful to young 
persons with poor memories, who have to pre- 
pare for examinations. But I am not dealing 
with that class. I am speaking to those whose 

138 



^ How Remember and Forget ^ 

examinations are past, and who are annoyed and 
discomforted by the apparent failure of a most 
useful faculty. 

In the first place, I should say that memory 
is to a large extent not a function of the brain, 
but a function of the heart. In other words, 
you remember what interests you. A true love 
will not forget. Take the tender relationship 
between a father and his daughters. Two 
daughters may profess affection equally. The 
one remembers her father's little tastes and 
fancies. Of these every man has some. They 
may seem small in themselves, but a great deal 
of life's comfort and peace depend upon them. 
One daughter will remember all these : will do 
the right thing and say the right thing. Another 
daughter will not be able even to recollect 
whether her father likes sugar in his tea. What 
is the secret of this difference ? Simply this, 
that the one daughter truly loves and the other 
does not. Love does not consist in affectionate 
words or in caresses. The true love is always 
thoughtful, and it is appreciated and returned 
just in proportion as it is thoughtful. If any 
readers of these lines find it difficult to remember 



How to Remember 



what are the preferences of their friends, they 
may be quite sure that it is because they are 
self-centred, and do not really care for their 
friends. They will find that just in proportion 
as they care, in that proportion they will find 
it easy to remember. This is why the excuse 
" I forgot " is so often a cruel stab. There are 
a great many people in this world who appear 
to be very amiable, and can smile and make 
themselves pleasant. But inside the cherry there 
is a hard stone, a hard heart that never goes any 
distance in thought except about itself. It is 
the unhappy wretched individual Ego, which is 
at the root of almost all human incapacity and 
misery. Think about your friends. Build them 
up in your imagination, fill up all the outlines, 
bring to mind their sayings and their doings 
escape from the narrow prison-house of self, 
and you will find that your memory is coming 
back to you as a companion of the heart. 

To follow out this thought. What people 
remember is what they are interested in. If 
therefore, you are interested in much, you will 
remember much. Widen the range of your 
interests. It may be asked, How am I to become 
140 



and how to Forget 



interested in new subjects ? To this the answer 
is, Learn something about them. The more you 
know, the more interested you will be in adding 
to your knowledge. Till you really know some- 
thing and have laid a foundation, you cannot, of 
course, be interested. The ruin of many lives 
is that they are built upon sand. There is no 
foundation of knowledge, and often no foundation 
of character. It does not matter what is said 
or done to those people. Nothing helps them. 
However anxiously the structure may be built, 
it will sink in the sand at last. But an open 
mind at any age, however late, may be enlarged 
and enriched. The willingness to receive is the 
first thing. I was speaking with a novelist the 
other evening. He told me that in early days 
he had great difficulty in making a livelihood. 
Through the kindness of a friend he was offered 
a subordinate position on a journal about me- 
chanics. He knew nothing of machinery, but 
he resolved to do his best. At first the work 
was exceedingly irksome, but he kept on. After 
some weeks the light suddenly dawned upon 
him. He began to feel that his subject was 
interesting. He went on and on, till ultimately 

141 



How to Remember 



he was offered the editorship of the paper, a 
position which he would have been quite com- 
petent to fill, and would have gladly accepted, 
had there not been by this time a better opening 
elsewhere. There are multitudes of people who 
never look at a newspaper, and some of them 
even make a boast of it. That grown-up men 
and women in an age like ours should not care 
to know what is going on is, beyond measure, 
disgraceful. They should begin at once a 
better course of life. At first they may not be 
interested, but if they will steadily persevere, 
they will begin to find that newspapers and 
books are a necessity. Until they become a 
necessity no good has been done. It is a poor 
business to read nothing ; it is even a poorer 
business to read under compulsion. One is 
inclined to say : He that is ignorant, let him 
be ignorant still. 

Another way of strengthening the memory 
is to read with attention. There is a story of 
a great scientific man who said that he did not 
think he differed very much from his fellow 
human beings, except in the power of attention. 
When he took up a subject he concentrated 
142 



and how to Forget 



the whole force of his mind upon it. The reader 
whose memory is decidedly weak must at once 
greatly restrict himself It is not for him to 
read omnivorously. He must confine himself 
to books that are worth careful study and care- 
ful thought. When he reads them he must 
dismiss everything else. He must not allow his 
thoughts to wander to his business or to his 
worries. He must be content to read very 
slowly. When he finishes a page he must, if 
not certain that he has got the meaning, read 
it over again. He must be constantly reviewing 
his reading. That is, before he begins afresh, 
he must interrogate himself on what he remem- 
bers. Many minds are like a purse with a 
hole in it. You may put into such a purse a 
sovereign every day, and yet you will be no 
richer at the end of the year, because the sove- 
reigns have slipped through and there is nothing 
left. Of course, no mind, however tenacious, 
keeps all that it receives, and those memories 
that are very weak must be content if they can 
only keep one halfpenny out of the sovereign. 
By-and-by, if they are persevering and deter- 
mined they will find that they are keeping 



How to Remember 



more than the halfpenny. Even if they keep 
no more, they will find at the end of the year 
that they are not far from possessing a sovereign, 
and this is opulence compared to their former 
estate. I should say to all persons notably 
weak in memory : Read nothing but one news- 
paper and one good book at a time. By keeping 
something you will gradually become interested 
in keeping more. It is like saving. When 
young people have accumulated their first pound 
and put it into the bank, there is little fear. 
They will go on adding to the nucleus, and will 
probably die well off. It is a comfortable ex- 
perience, no doubt, to become richer in money 
each year, but most of us find that it is not 
within our power. It is, however, within our 
power to become richer mentally every day and 
every year, and that is a far better thing. 

One other suggestion. Persons of weak 
memory, and, indeed, all persons, will find the 
practice of committing to memory very useful. 
If you like a passage of poetry, learn a part. 
Everybody should be able to repeat at least 
twenty good poems and many little stanzas 
besides. In order to keep this you must be 
144 



and how to Forget 



continually repeating them. There is no better 
way of passing a dull journey in a train than 
in going over poems. I think it is even a better 
thing to learn some fine passage of prose. If 
you can let them remain in your minds, they 
will give you some idea of what can be done 
with words. If you repeat a passage of some 
great writer of English, like De Quincey or 
Charlotte Bronte, in an underground train or 
on any tiresome journey, you will generally find 
that you are not sure of some words, and you 
guess them. When you come home, look up 
the passage and see how much better, how in- 
evitable is the word that the writer actually 
used. It is a humbling, but a very salutary 
experience. 

Those who possess good memories are, so far, 
exempt from these rules. All such persons are 
keenly interested in many things, and can with- 
out effort attend closely to what really interests 
them. They can afford to forget a great deal 
that is not worth recalling. Many books read 
for amusement in weary hours need not be 
remembered. Many things it is best to forget. 
Still, as we grow older we are apt to forget 

L 145 



How to Remember 



that our memories weaken. This should teach 
us to make our possessions more secure. It 
should teach us also to be modest in our state- 
ment of facts. It is wonderful how the mist 
thickens over the past, and how many errors 
we may make in perfect good faith. Those 
who intend to write reminiscences should keep 
letters and diaries, or if they will not, they should 
write their reminiscences before they are fifty. 
Nothing is more astonishing than to come across 
people who have been in the habitual society 
of the greatest minds and who can tell you 
absolutely nothing. I found in a recent book 
a list of celebrities at a dinner party. Then 
comes : " And wasn't their talk worth hearing ? 
You may imagine." Just so. There is no 
more interesting reading than a good book of 
reminiscences, but there are few such books. 
Macaulay says in the essay on Milton : " We 
imagine to ourselves the breathless silence with 
which we should have listened to his slightest 
word." Three times in my life I have felt the 
same about eminent persons, and in time I got 
the chance, and I am ashamed to say how little 
I retain, save in one case, where I wrote down 
146 



and how to Forget 



immediately after coming home all that I could 
remember of the great man's conversation. Let 
not people of weak and failing memory be unduly 
discouraged. If the weakness of memory is 
really another name for heartlessness, they ought 
to be discouraged. If it is only another name 
for stupidity and carelessness, they ought to be 
discouraged. If it means neither of these, they 
have a consolation that very few people can 
remember half as much as they wish to 
remember. 

On the art of forgetting I have not much to 
say. Most men complain that they forget too 
easily. I have read 

Roll back, pale Lethe. Let me see a gleam 
Of the returning glories of the day. 

And, again, I have heard it said that " we 
forget, not because we will, but because we must." 
Others, however, remember too much. They 
are haunted for years, it may be day and 
night, with one disquieting, troubling, tormenting 
thought. It is the last at night. They waken 
up to it in the dark hours, when the tides of 
life run low. It comes to them with the morning 



^ How Remember and Forget ^ 

light, it pursues them through the day. Some 
sin, some failure, some great sorrow, some baffled 
aspiration — it may be any of these. To such 
I would say : Avoid everything that feeds the 
memory. That is the first rule. Break off 
every association that tends to keep it living. 
And the next thing I should say is : " Time is 
your friend." You will waken some day, if you 
will do your best, to " a morrow free of thought." 
I do not mean by this that we should strive 
or desire entirely to lose the memory of our 
griefs. What we should seek is to have the 
sting drawn from them, so that they turn into 
sober joys and peaceful hopes. 



148 



XV 

" R.S.V.P." 

" Answer if you please." Is not this one of 
the greatest, most exacting, and in a sense 
most holy demands that life makes upon us ? 
A whole world of meaning is wrapped up in 
the familiar letters. We may start from their 
original sense and carry it up by plain and easy 
steps to the highest call the Divine can address 
to the human. 

I will not say much about the demand 
which every letter almost makes for a reply. 
The tyranny of correspondence in these days 
becomes a formidable thing, even in the case of 
insignificant people. To answer even a dozen 
letters carefully will take up the best part 
of a morning, and many of us have not the 
time to spare. Our energy is consumed in 
attending to other work. Still, I think the 
busiest of public men do a great deal, from 

149 



^ " R.S.V.P." ^ 

sheer generosity of heart, to satisfy even those 
correspondents who are impertinent and intrusive. 
Every one knows Mr, Gladstone's diligence in this 
way, and I doubt whether there was any more 
amiable trait in his character. He knew what 
a postcard from him meant, and he did his 
utmost. The case of Lord Roberts will occur 
to every one, but there are others less known 
but even more significant. Matthew Arnold had 
the reputation of being supercilious, and he did 
something to deserve it. I understand that 
there is to be no authorised biography of him, 
and that we must be content with the volumes 
of letters issued by Mr. Russell. But I have 
had occasion to see at one time or another 
many letters written by Arnold to very humble 
authors, long letters too, answering with delicate 
courtesy the questions put to him, and criticising 
carefully. For this one cannot help loving 
Arnold. A still more remarkable instance was 
that of Charles Dickens, who, in the very height 
of his strenuous life, found time to write long 
letters of encouragement to contributors who 
showed any sign of promise. James Payn has 
told us how men used to come to him, and at 
150 



¥ " R.S.V.P." ^ 

a certain stage of the conversation move their 
hands towards the breast-pocket of their shabby 
coats and extract a letter from the Chief* 
Persons who write letters asking favours from 
those to whom they are strangers should con- 
struct silence charitably. It probably means 
that the receiver of the letter is not able to do 
anything, and that he is himself oppressed with 
work. Letters, I have no doubt, are doing 
much to kill public men. Bishop Creighton is 
an instance not to be soon forgotten. 

R.S.V.P. to need, to poverty and sorrow, 
whether they speak or not. To eyes that are 
at once kind and keen the signs are generally 
manifest enough. You can usually read a deep 
trouble in a man's face or a woman's, or, for 
that matter, in a child's. As for worries that 
spring from disappointed vanity or ambition, 
they are perhaps best left alone ; but we ought 
to have in us the eager impulse to hold up a 
falling and failing thing, and we all have seen, 
or might have seen, fellow-creatures who were 
just about to succumb. There are those who 
deliberately shield themselves from the appeal 
of distressed humanity. Alcestis, in William 



^ " R.S.V.P." ^ 

Morris's poem, when she is contemplating the 
surrender of her Hfe for her husband, wishes 
that she had not borne a living soul to 
love. 

Hadst thou not rather Hfted hands to Jove 

To turn thine heart to stone, thy front to brass, 

That through this wondrous world thy soul might pass 

Well pleased and careless as Diana goes 

Through the thick woods, all pitiless to those 

Her shafts smite down ? 

There are those who see atid have a heart, 
but somehow have no power of expression. 
There is a thin conventional crust, behind which 
a true flame of love is burning, and it usually 
makes itself manifest at last, by deeds certainly, 
and in the end by slow, difficult, but most 
meaningful words. But the commonest type is 
that of those who are too selfish, who are too 
much taken up with their own cares, who keep 
thinking of what others should do for them, 
and forget altogether what they might do for 
others. " Blind me with seeing tears until I 
see." 

R.S.V.P. to kindness. No doubt it is our 
duty to be kind, looking for nothing again, but 
152 



^ " R.S.V.P." ^ 

the kindness is strangely oppressed and chilled 
when no response is given. Children are taught, 
or used to be taught, to say " Thank you." 
Many people, no longer children, have forgotten 
to do it. It is a rare thing to find any one 
who can say " Thank you " pleasantly and 
gratefully. And yet in ninety cases out of a 
hundred this is all that a benefactor desires. 
Perhaps the shyness comes half from shyness, 
half from pride. Gratitude is really felt, though 
it is not expressed. Yet what strange instances 
of downright thanklessness every one comes to 
experience. I have known a man hand over 
the careful savings of careful years to save a 
friend in difficulty without receiving at the 
time, or at any time, even so much as the 
most formal expression of thanks. I have 
known cases in which great efforts were sys- 
tematically and patiently made to better the 
lot of a fellow-creature without special claim, 
and these efforts were resented rather than 
appreciated. I believe, indeed, that it needs 
more love in a human heart to take service 
graciously and gladly than to render service. 
And yet we should never drop from our prayers 

^53 



^ " R.S.V.P." %» 

the petitions : ' Remember all who have ever 
shown us any kindness. May we never forget 
to be grateful." One dark feature of human 
life is the way in which people take for granted 
the kindness of those in the home with them. 
They ought to be, if possible, more grateful 
for the thoughtful love that watches over their 
ways and anticipates their wishes in the home 
circle than for anything they receive outside. 
And yet how many have nothing to say about 
it till they have lost the opportunity of speak- 
ing ! 

R.S.V.P. in conversation : I mean in conver- 
sation where you have fair play. There are 
talkers who address you, to use Queen Victoria's 
happy phrase, as if you were a public meeting, 
and want no further response than a public 
meeting can give them. They do not even 
deserve what they want. But the great majority 
of people need response. It is not enough 
simply to listen, but if you are to draw out 
delicate natures with no great faculty of ex- 
pression you must respond. Response is often 
to be found in a smile, in the sudden lightening 
of the eye, in a tear. It may be quite sufficiently 



^ '' R.S.V.P." ^ 

given in a " Yes," or in a " Go on," provided 
the words are spoken in genuine earnestness. 
There is no abiding enjoyment in talking to 
people who do not respond, who listen and half 
comprehend and half forget. But how happy 
to find some one who really cares to know 
what we feel and think ! In George Macdonald's 
great novel, Robert Falconer, he tells us that his 
hero's first love was his violin. It understood 
him. Whether his mood was merry or sad, it 
responded. One of the great things to be done 
for the happiness of human life is to teach 
people to talk, to take pains about talking, to 
do their best to show the best that is in them to 
other people. Dull country towns and villages 
would become more desirable as places of resi- 
dence than cities, if that could come to pass, for 
the only reason I ever saw for wishing to live 
in a big city is that, in a big city, you can 
gradually find a sufficient circle of congenial 
spirits. But everywhere there are men and 
women enough to support one another's social 
needs, if only they would take the trouble. As 
they do not take the trouble, they soon exhaust 
each other's mind. Conversation, even between 



^ " R.S.V.P." 9 

the most intimate, ought to be carefully prepared 
for — that is, each should reflect previously over 
what he is going to say to his friend, each 
should think over the probable experiences and 
circumstances of his friend. 

R.S.V.P., once more, to the invitations of 
nature. Everywhere nature is saying to our 
dull eyes and ears : " Oh, look at me ; oh, listen 
to me." Most of us see nothing, hear nothing. 
We go for our walk, and we cannot tell when 
we come back what flowers are out, or what 
were the colours of the skies. I knew an old 
minister who had great happiness in his later 
years after reading Ruskin. He said Ruskin 
had enabled him to discover the sky, and so 
his life was doubled. Why should not children 
be taught to know the names of flowers and 
trees and stones ? Why should they not be 
taught in some measure to observe, and .to 
repeat their observations ? When a boy, I had 
infinite delight in Longfellow's poem " Hiawatha." 
It first taught me to hear the voice of the 
woods, to discover that nature was not the 
dead thing I had fancied it, but full of life 
and utterance. 

156 



" R.S.V.P." 

Up the oak-tree, close behind him, 
Sprang the squirrel, Adjidaumo, 
In and out among the branches, 
Coughed and chattered from the oak-tree, 
Laughed and said between his laughing, 

" Do not shoot me, Hiawatha ! " 
And the rabbit from his pathway 
Leaped aside, and at a distance 
Sat erect upon his haunches. 
Half in fear and half in frolic, 
Saying to the little hunter, 

" Do not shoot me, Hiawatha ! " 



^57 



XVI 
Concerning Order and Method 

Order and method are great things, but they are 
not ends in themselves. What matters ultimately 
is, that a man should turn out good work and as 
much of it as he can safely accomplish. He will 
find it wise to be orderly and methodical in all 
things ; he will find it necessary to be orderly 
and methodical in some at least. But a man 
may be very orderly and very methodical, un- 
impeachable in all his habits, and yet he may 
accomplish the journey of life without leaving 
any clear track behind him. Let me write 
this week about things unessential and things 
essential. 

It is no doubt very wise to have your library 
perfectly arranged. The books should be classi- 
fied according to subjects. They ought to be 
always in their places. You ought, whenever you 
have finished with a book, to put it safely back 

ij8 



Order and Method 



in its place on the shelves. There ought to be no 
scattering of volumes belonging to the same work 
or the same author. There ought to be no heaps 
of books on the floor. All papers should be kept 
in their places, and the study table should be 
always clear, with the ink bottle filled to the 
proper point, and the necessary supply of pens 
in order. Grant all this, and what then ? I have 
seen many such libraries out of which very little 
came. I have seen such libraries, and have been 
able to trace the year when the owner stopped 
reading. Their minds were like sea-beaches : you 
could trace the line of their last high tide. Many 
people there are who practically stop with Tenny- 
son and Browning, with Dickens, George Eliot, 
and Thackeray. There are men in the dangerous 
period of middle life who get as far as Stevenson, 
and who will never get any further. There are 
others who are just kept going by Rudyard Kipling, 
and as Mr. Kipling is, happily, a young man, 
with much good work, let us hope, before him, 
they may survive for a time, I have seen very 
perfect libraries with splendid morocco and calf 
gilt belonging to the class who read Montaigne 
and quote Charles Lamb, and have at command a 



^ Concerning Order ^ 

stock of easy Latin phrases, and are characterised 
by a certain convexity of person. Those are 
delightful companions, but nothing very much 
ever comes of their activity. I know also very 
disorderly libraries where every law of arrange- 
ment is openly trangressed, and yet a good deal 
of work has come out of them. In this the result, 
and not the method, is the important thing. If a 
man can find his books and use them, if he knows 
what is in them, if he keeps reinforcing them, if he 
keeps his old friendships in repair, and if he is 
always making new friendships, then he need not 
be dismayed when confronted and accused by 
very spick-and-span persons, whose whole energy 
is apparently taken up with the arranging and 
dusting of their volumes. 

Early rising is a very commendable thing. 
The early bird, it is well understood, catches 
the worm, and he is very welcome to it. Many 
of the great literary achievements of the world 
have been accomplished by very busy people who 
managed to begin their work early. Of Dean 
Milman, Macaulay said, very truly, that, though 
his style could not be defended, he managed to 
accumulate a number of interesting facts. When 
1 60 



and Method 



his style is at its worst it is very bad indeed, and 
it was never worse than in his little memoir of 
Lord Macaulay. It is in extraordinary contrast 
with that of Sir Francis Palgrave, a distinguished 
contemporary of Milman's, now almost forgotten. 
Nothing, however, can detract seriously from 
Milman's well-earned place, and it is instructive 
to find that the hour worth all the rest of the 
day was the hour which he secured in the early 
morning. It was mainly by using this that he 
succeeded in discharging his clerical and social 
duties, and at the same time in preparing permanent 
contributions to literature. Still, many men, who 
have done a great deal of work, have not been 
early risers, and many men have risen early to 
do nothing worth speaking of. It is said of Mr. 
Balfour — I do not know what truth there is in 
the story — that he never gets up till one o'clock. 
I do not see that it is anybody's business so 
long as Mr. Balfour does his work, and if I 
am not mistaken he has accomplished his full 
share. 

Exercise, again, is needed by everybody, and 
especially by literary men. We have always 
been told this, and on the whole great attention 
M l6l 



Concerning Order 



is given to the counsel. I am of opinion that 
one hour's smart walking every afternoon is 
sufficient, and that this is the minimum. Many- 
people, however, take no exercise. Mr. Chamber- 
lain is said to be one of them. Yet Mr. 
Chamberlain's worst enemy has never denied 
that he is a very hard worker, and he is now 
well past sixty. I had a friend once who used 
to declare that he never took a walk without 
feeling distinctly the worse for it. It was diffi- 
cult not to frown on such a lamentable defiance 
of common-sense and medical opinion ; and yet, 
after all, it was the man's own business. He 
had to find out just how best he could do his 
work, and take that way. I am all for freedom 
in those respects, provided there is a genuine 
spirit of industry. Judge a man by what he 
does, and not by the way in which he does it. 
The latter is his business ; it is not yours. We 
shall always want people like John Stuart Mill 
to write books about liberty. The tendency 
of thought is constantly to establish a tyranny : 
to tell you what you are to do, what you are 
to read, what you are to think, and to prescribe 
the method in each case. All I can say is, 
162 



and Method 



that there are many people who never can and 
never will do their best work, unless they are 
allowed a margin of freedom, unless in many 
things they are a law to themselves. 

But I grant that there are some things 
essential, though not many. In order to do the 
most we are capable of, the first rule is that 
every day should see its own work done. Let 
the task for each day be resolved and arranged 
for deliberately the night before, and let nothing 
interfere with its performance. It is a secret 
which we learn slowly — the secret of living by 
days. I am convinced that there are very few 
so precious. What confuses work, what mars 
life and makes it feverish, is the postponing of 
the task which ought to be done now. The 
word which John Ruskin had on his seal was 
" To-day." To crowd two days' work into one 
is the way to be unhappy and ineffectual. 
There is plenty of time for any man, and 
nobody can work well for more than a certain 
number of hours. " Without haste and without 
rest," that is the true principle. It saves one 
from the haunted, hurried feeling which wears 
the nerves and brings down the temper, and 

163 



Concerning Order 



takes the peace out of life. This is a rule 
which has few little exceptions. There is one, 
however. A hard worker who delights in 
routine, and who is never so happy as when 
he is going on from day to day, and from 
week to week, with every hour planned and 
filled, will sometimes suddenly find that he 
cannot do anything. This is Nature's signal 
for rest, and it ought instantly to be obeyed. 
In these cases rest is probably not to be found 
in amusement. It is to be gained simply by 
ceasing from work until the impulse returns, as 
it will return. I suppose that many of us, when 
this experience comes, try, by violent efforts 
of will, to conquer the inertia. This is not 
wise in any one who knows that, whatever 
else he may be, he is at least not a habitual 
idler. 

There is another virtue to which I attach 
great and growing importance, and that is the 
virtue of punctuality. You can never do any- 
thing in these days with anybody who is not 
punctual. Every business man knows this. 
You make an appointment for twelve o'clock, 
and at half-past twelve a man enters, and in- 
164 



a?td Method 



dulges in witticisms about the conduct of his 
watch. It is not long since a person of this 
kind took his watch out and said proudly that 
the hour hand was a-wanting. You may be 
civil, but you are silently resolving to have 
nothing more to do with the man, and you are 
thinking how you fretted through and lost half 
an hour of good time in the best part of the 
day. The way to be punctual is always to be 
early. Make up your mind to be on the spot 
five or ten minutes before it is necessary, and 
there is no fear. When the virtue of punc- 
tuality is thoroughly acquired, other virtues come 
in its train. You generally find that the punc- 
tual person is at all times the trustworthy 
person. People would try harder for trust- 
worthiness if they knew how lovable a quality 
it is. When you know you can rely upon any 
one, that whatever they undertake to do will 
be done, that you can really pass over a share 
of your load to them, you cannot help liking 
them. On the other hand, it does not matter 
how amiable men be, if they are forgetful, if 
they are unpunctual, if they habitually neglect, 
they become sources of such annoyance that 

.65 



Concerning Order 



one's liking is apt to die out. Everybody who 
has visited much knows the difference between 
a household where things are done punctually, 
and one where they are not. I am not plead- 
ing for a ferocious punctuality, which may be 
made troublesome and even tyrannical. But 
any house where hours are not kept is sure to 
be miserable, wasteful ; in short, a house to be 
sedulously and firmly shunned. 

Let me not be misunderstood, I advise all 
young people to be orderly in everything. I 
advise them to rise early and go to bed early. 
I advise them to take plenty of exercise. Only 
let them remember that they may do all those 
things and yet be absolutely useless. It does 
not matter how early you rise if you do 
nothing when you get up. It does not matter 
how much you do for the sake of your 
health, if you are a healthy good-for-nothing. 
You will never become intelligent by buying 
books and arranging them neatly, and treating 
them like bits of furniture. You must get the 
books into your souls. But, if the task of life 
is to be fulfilled adequately, there must be a 
plan and purpose in our lives, not necessarily 

i66 



and Method 



recognisable by others, but well understood and 
strictly adhered to by ourselves. Undertakings 
should not be lightly made ; but, when they 
are made, they should as far as possible be 
strictly adhered to. 



167 



XVII 
Should Old Letters be Kept? 

I HAVE received the following letter : — 

A problem, which I should like to see you touch 
upon, is the problem of accumulation, not of money, 
but of books, papers, newspaper cuttings, scraps, 
notes, old letters, relics, programmes, etc. What is 
a good workable principle to guide us in keeping or 
rejecting ? It is easy to fill drawers and cupboards. 
But the question will always arise : Is it worth the 
trouble ? The mere matter of time presents a serious 
difficulty. It is possible to accumulate so much that 
a vast portion of one's leisure time might be taken 
up in the sorting and rearranging, the retaining 
and rejecting, to the exclusion of more profitable 
occupation. Yet much that is kept becomes of the 
greatest use and interest. Some old letters, in the 
light of after events, possess great and cherished value. 
Notes and scraps, pamphlets and papers, often prove 
of great, almost indispensable, service. 

To the literary man, pure and simple, these accumu- 
lations form, no doubt, part of his stock-in-trade ; and 
his library and furniture therein provide serviceable 

i68 



^ Should Old Letters be Kept ? ^ 

and get-at-able accommodation for them. But to the 
business man, who takes an interest in general matters 
outside his commercial affairs, and whose spare time 
is limited, it becomes a matter of difficulty to adjust 
the details of these accumulations in a proportionate 
and satisfactory way. 

This is a really interesting and practical 
question. It must have perplexed most of us, 
and it is certainly not easy to answer. I will 
do my best, however. 

In many respects the case for keeping books 
and letters and papers is very strong. As regards 
books, the old saying holds true that, if you 
keep anything for seven years, you will find a 
use for it. Again and again I have got rid of 
books, thinking they had served their turn, and 
after an interval have missed them and have 
bought them again. In papers one sees many 
things which he knows will be interesting in 
after years, and there is no better reading for 
hours of relaxation than the bound volumes of 
a really well-written journal. Then, as to letters, 
there are many which it is very hard to part 
with — letters of affection, letters from eminent 
people, letters that bear upon important turning- 

169 



%» Should Old Letters be Kept ? ^ 

points in one's life. These one would rather 
retain ; and, indeed, some of them will be kept, 
must be kept to the end. I do not imagine that 
Carlyle ever destroyed that letter of Sterling's 
which was " written in star fire and immortal 
tears," though I do not know that it has ever 
been published. Yet the difficulties of preservation 
are in each case enormous. 

Consider first the accumulation of books. I 
am not speaking of those people who keep 
together a few volumes and never purchase any 
more. Everybody who cares for books goes 
on adding them to his collection. In ordinary 
houses there is hardly ever room for a large 
library. Dickens has immortalised the London 
study, the stuffy little room on the right hand 
as you enter the house, where no one ever 
reads a word. Even in the big and high-rented 
London houses you can scarcely find an ample 
book-room. So unless you are in a position to 
build your own place there must be selection. 
This is not so great a misfortune as it may 
look. After all, few people can do much with 
a very large library, and in any case it is a 
choice of evils. The amount of trouble and 
170 



^ Should Old Letters be Kept? ^ 

discomfort involved in the keeping together a 
great and growing collection of books is more 
than the result justifies. I do not intend ever 
to possess more books than I have now — that 
is, as new books come in I shall go on sifting 
the old. No doubt mistakes will be made ; 
but upon the whole, when the balance is struck, 
it is better to have a manageable library, no 
more books than you are able to handle or 
use. VVe who live in London have a great 
advantage. The British Museum Library is 
accessible, and at the worst we can find our 
lost trea.sures there. I wish that there were 
more people afflicted with the perplexity of 
not knowing what they are to do with their 
books. However, bad as the times may be, 
there are still a good many of us who love 
books, and will have them at the cost of some 
real self-denial. 

With regard to papers, it is easy to point out 
the ideal way, but very difficult to follow it. It 
would be well to have large scrap-books to cut 
out interesting paragraphs and articles, and to 
preserve them in that way. Many of us, how- 
ever, are totally disqualified. We never could 

171 



^ Should Old Letters he Kept ? ^ 

possess, or at least have within our reach at the 
same time, a scrap-book, scissors, a gum-pot and 
a brush. All these are necessary, if the work 
is to be done. I once bought a pair of scissors 
for the purpose, and carried them faithfully about 
for nearly a year. The results were disappointing, 
as I never had gum just right and ready when the 
work was to be done. However, I have three 
scrap-books, and two of them are full. They 
were made a very long time ago, but I occa- 
sionally find them useful to this day. All my life 
I have believed in jotting down interesting things 
that you meet with in your reading, but owing to 
the difficulty of having a pencil and a note-book 
ready at the same time^ have never got beyond 
one page, and have had to trust my memory 
entirely for illustrations and references. It is 
consoling to know some friends who are more 
businesslike, and keep on collections of different 
kinds. They always tell me that they get some 
good out of these volumes, and it may well be so. 
One substantial reason against keeping notebooks 
is that the practice does tend to weaken the 
memory, although I am sure it would pay one to 
read always with a pencil and notebook in hand. 
172 



^ Should Old Letters be Kept ? ^ 

The most difficult question of all is the dis- 
posing of old letters. Are they to be all burnt ? 
Certainly very many of them should be burnt. 
There cannot be more than a small proportion 
worth the trouble of keeping. There is a great 
deal to be said in favour of preserving letters 
from notable people, although personally I have 
not done it to any extent. I sometimes wish 
that I had, but on the whole the wish is feeble. 
Letters of affection raise a question which comes 
home to most people. It has been discussed in 
an interesting way by a clever American novelist, 
Mrs. Edith Wharton, in a little book entitled A 
Gift from the Grave, which John Murray has 
recently published. Mrs. Wharton's treatment is 
too too — she writes like Henry James when he 
is most clever and most provoking. She tries to 
render complexities and sinuosities of feeling and 
thought which remain obscure after her strength 
is exhausted. But she has real strength, and her 
story is well worth reading. It tells how a man 
received love-letters from a famous woman. He 
did not love her, but she went on writing and 
writing, till at last she died. He kept the letters, 
and ultimately he fell in love and wanted to 



^ Should Old Letters be Kept ? ^ 

marry. He was poor, and in order to make a 
little money he sold the letters to a publisher, and 
they were given to the world under the lady's 
name. His wife discovered what he had done, 
and naturally did not admire the proceeding. 
Therefore he passed through a complicated re- 
pentance, very cleverely described by Mrs. 
Wharton. The whole thing, however, could 
have been put by Artemus Ward in one sentence. 
The man felt himself a " mean cuss," and so he 
was. Ultimately he and his wife became better 
friends than ever. He should not have published 
the letters. We shall all agree about this. Should 
he have kept them ? I think not ; at least, he 
should not have kept them after he became 
engaged to the other woman. No doubt genuine 
love-letters have an interest. We read them 
every day in breach of promise cases, and editors 
show a true instinct in printing them at length. 
But are they edifying ? Mr. Barrett Browning 
did a very bold thing when he published the 
love-letters of his father and mother, but the 
step he took was fully justified. If we had all 
the letters which Tennyson and his wife ex- 
changed during their long engagement, we should 



^ Should Old Letters be Kept ? ^ 

know more of Tennyson than any biography 
could tell us. But the feeling remains that, 
save in a few extraordinary instances, we have 
no right to know. Love-letters ought not to 
be published. They were not written for out- 
siders. There is something in the nature of 
sacrilege in revealing them to the world, and if 
it is the case that they should not be pub- 
lished, it is doubtful how far they should be 
kept. At any rate, a man should see that 
they are destroyed before his death. The same 
principle applies to all very intimate letters. If 
you wish to understand, consider how you 
would feel if your most intimate letters were 
made in any way public. This is a question 
which every man and every woman may put 
and answer. We should all say, I imagine, 
" Burn my letters," and it is easy to see what 
would happen if the desire were carried out. 
There would be no problem then. Yet, after 
all, perhaps few of us are strong enough to get 
rid of all our treasure. Dr. Johnson kept almost 
to the end the letters of his mother and of 
Molly Aston, the sweetheart of his youth. 
When life was ebbing to its close he burned 



^ Should Old Letters be Kept ? ^ 

them : his mother's with a flood of tears. Of 
Molly Aston's, he said to Mrs. Piozzi, they 
should be the last papers he would destroy. If 
the truth were known, it would be found that 
most of us have some secret place where a few 
letters are hidden. We shall never open it 
till the goal is in sight, and even then we shall 
not take courage to read the fading leaves. 
We should almost be glad to hear that all had 
disappeared in ashes, and yet we have not the 
courage as yet to make an end. 

It will be seen that I favour the practical 

destruction of everything in the way of papers 

and letters as, on the whole, the least evil. 

There are exceptions, however, which should be 

noted. Those persons who have large means 

and much leisure may do what others cannot. 

I heard the other night of a man who keeps 

up a large correspondence with his friends. He 

has nothing else to do, and when he receives 

their letters he copies out what he thinks the 

best parts of them in large volumes provided 

for the purpose. He has accumulated quite a 

row of this correspondence, and if he were a 

person of any consequence he could no doubt 

176 



^ Should Old Letters be Kept ? ^ 

write a full and accurate autobiography. Cer- 
tainly, if he means at the close of his career to 
write reminiscences, he should carefully preserve 
documents. Thomas Mozley, when he published 
his reminiscences of the Oxford Movement, said 
very truly that recollections were " subject to a 
lower depravation, the blending of fact with 
fiction." He added a remark which many of 
us must have found true in experience : " Nor 
is it a matter in which confidence is any 
assurance, for those who remember most exactly 
are often the most wrong. At least, they are 
not more likely to be right than others." Yes, 
we must admit that memory does not serve us 
perfectly, and that it is often least to be 
trusted on the points where it is most dog- 
matic. Mr. Mozley wrote his reminiscences 
from memory alone. He had a mass of letters 
and journals, but he did not consult them, as 
his sight was nearly gone. In consequence he 
got into some trouble, and made a poor figure 
in controversy with Archdeacon Denison and 
others. If a man has an interesting story to 
tell, he may do it without offence and without 
egotism ; only, let him preserve letters and keep 

N 177 



^ Should Old Letters he Kept ? ijr 

journals, and be sure of facts, lest he find 
memory playing the traitor at the hour when 
he most needs her. 

I take up a weekly paper and find a story 
of the late Sir John Hassard, the late Registrar 
of the Province of Canterbury. Sir John had 
trouble with Archbishop Benson, whose temper 
was sometimes uncontrollable. On one occasion 
the Registrar told his Grace, after a violent 
scene, that his self-respect forbade him to 
remain in his presence, and he left the palace, 
meaning never to return. Within an hour a 
very frank apology came from the Archbishop. 
Sir John hesitated as to whether he should not 
burn it, but he decided not to. He said, " Who 
can tell what questions may arise as to my 
conduct after I am dead ? I am justified in 
keeping the letter for my honour's sake, and 
for that of my family." In this he was right, 
and the few among us who may be written 
of after death are wise in retaining all papers 
which will explain their motives and their con- 
duct. Happily the terror of a biography does 
not disturb very many. Obscure people, who 
will be utterly forgotten by all but a faithful 
178 



^ Should Old Letters be Kept ? ^ 

few within a week after their deaths, have no 
account to render to the press, and perhaps 
they will find it wisest to keep the sweetness 
and the bitterness of the past in the sanctuary 
of their own hearts, and take care that no 
stranger shall intermeddle with it. 



79 



XVIII 
The Secret of Mrs. Farfrae 

In Mr. Hardy's powerful story, The Mayor of 
Casterbridge, he is more merciful to the sweet 
and patient Elizabeth Jane Farfrae than to 
almost any of his heroines. He even allows 
that she has a measure of happiness in life, 
notwithstanding some deep and sharp regrets. 
Her secret is that " of making limited oppor- 
tunities endurable ; which she deemed to consist 
in the cunning enlargement by a species of 
microscopic treatment, even to the magnitude 
of positive pleasure, of those minute forms of 
satisfaction that offer themselves to everybody not 
in positive pain ; which thus handled have much 
of the same inspiriting effect upon life as wider 
interests cursorily embraced." Mr. Hardy, I 
believe, disclaims the name of pessimist, but he 
is careful even in this concession to guard 
himself against optimism. " Her experience had 

i8o 



^ The Secret of Mrs. Farfrae ^ 

been of a kind to teach her, rightly or wrongly, 
that the doubtful honour of a brief transit through 
a sorry world hardly called for effusiveness, even 
when the path was suddenly irradiated at some 
half-way point by day-beams rich as hers." The 
late Mr. Hamerton also disclaimed pessimism, 
but he admitted that he thought it was a pity 
that the earth and its inhabitants had ever been 
created. To the question, " Would you, if you 
had the power, put an end to the suffering on 
our own planet, by the instantaneous and painless 
extinction of all human and animal life ? " he 
declined to reply. He was unwilling to under- 
take personal responsibility for the extinction of 
life, but looked upon its sure extinction in the 
course of nature without the slightest disapproval, 
and with very little regret. He even compared 
the continent of Africa with the desolate lunar 
landscape of windless mountains, and declared 
that, to him, it seemed that Africa was the sadder 
sight. Without entering into questions like 
these, I think that there is something that 
deserves consideration in Mrs. Farfrae's method 
of making limited opportunities endurable. 
There is much in the saying that we ought not 

i8i 



^ The Secret of Mrs. Farfrae ^ 

to pursue happiness, but it must not be taken 
too absolutely. There is the happiness that 
is overtaken and the happiness that overtakes, 
and the second is the sweeter. Nevertheless, 
just as we make plans for learning and plans 
for worldly success, and plans even for winning 
love, there is a place for a wise consideration 
in the ordering of our life. 

I am thinking of those whose life is obviously 
limited, whose opportunities are few, who have 
occupations, but not occupations or amusements 
enough to keep them from dulness and weari- 
ness. There are many people in great cities 
who are overburdened, who have no time for 
reflection except when they cannot sleep, and 
whom old age surprises in the height of their 
energies. These need a word of caution. They 
lose much if they lose the power of enjoying 
leisure, that leisure which breathes in Dyce's 
picture of Bemerton, and belongs to the Sunday 
afternoons in Adam Bede. They should be 
careful not to imagine that they are indispensable, 
that when they sit still and fold their hands 
the wheels of the universe drag heavily, and all 
nature is out of joint. They will be wise if 
182 



^ The Secret of Mrs. Farfrae ^ 

they' always remember that real work, the labour 
of the hand and brain, soul and spirit, is but 
a venture. What comes of it we cannot tell, 
and need not inquire too curiously. What we 
are concerned with is that the work should be 
done faithfully so far as we can do it, while 
the issues are left to develop themselves. 

At the same time it is an equal error to 
imagine that work in itself is a cause of misery, 
and that to get rid of it would be the entrance 
into peace. Charles Lamb used to say that, if 
he had a son, he would call him Nothing-to-do, 
and he should do nothing. But, if the son had 
ever existed, he would have rebelled against his 
lot. For the most of us there is neither too 
much work nor too much leisure. We have at 
best only our evenings to play with, and happy 
is the man who redeems his evenings. He may 
spend them in congenial study, or with friends, 
or best of all, if that is possible, in his domestic 
circle. Two pictures of a redeemed evening 
rise before me. In that rejected first book of 
Charlotte Bronte, which some think the best 
of all her works, because it has the most of her 
own heart and life, she draws the evening as 

183 



^ The Secret of Mrs. Frafrae ^ 

she would have made it for herself, had the 
chance been given her. The husband and the 
wife both earned their bread by exercise, and 
that of the most arduous kind. " Our days 
were thoroughly occupied ; we used to part 
every morning at eight o'clock and not meet 
again till five. But with what sweet rest did 
the turmoil of each busy day decline ! Looking 
down the vista of memory I see the evenings 
passed in that little parlour, like a long circle 
of rubies circling the dusky brow of the past. 
Unvaried were they as each cut gem, and, like 
each gem, brilliant and burning." And the 
author of Mark Rutherford tells us : "It was 
a comfort to me to think that the moment the 
clock struck seven my second self died, and 
that my first self has suffered nothing by having 
anything to do with it. Who was to tell the 
revulsion on reaching home, which I should never 
have known had I lived a life of idleness ? 
Ellen was fond of hearing me read, and with 
a little care I was able to select what would 
bear reading. Oh, how many times have I left 
my office humiliated by some silently endured 
outbreak on the part of my master, the more 
184 



^ The Secret of Mrs. Farfrae ^ 

galling because I could not put it aside as 
altogether gratuitous, and in less than an hour 
it was two miles away, and I was myself again ! " 

I am thinking, however, of those who, whether 
they complain or not, feel that their lives are 
dull. They are drearily situated in remote 
places, where they have little or no congenial 
companionship. Their tasks are not outwardly 
and visibly imposed upon them. Life is grey 
and sombre. It lacks interest, and there is 
nothing in the future to promise refreshment. I 
am not thinking of those who are baffled and 
heartsore with many anxieties, or stunned by a 
reverse of fortune, but of men and women who 
are accounted enviable by their neighbours, and 
yet feel in their heart of hearts that life is slip- 
ping away from them, and that they are not 
making the best of it. To such Mrs. Farfrae's 
secret should be very useful, and it may be 
applied in various ways. 

(i) The first thing to do is to make the best 
of what you possess, to cultivate a knowledge 
and a love of your surroundings. Imagine, if 
you can, that the axis of the earth projects from 
the centre of your village square. According to 

,8s 



^ The Secret of Mrs. Farfrae ^ 

The Autocrat this is the belief of good 
Bostonians about Boston, and it makes them 
happy. The habit of grumbling at a monotonous, 
uninteresting environment is very dangerous. 
Psychologists tell us nowadays that, if we act 
up to what we wish to believe, we shall attain 
belief at last. And every part of God's world 
has its own quality and attraction, did we but 
know it. I think women are more easily able 
to do this than men are. There is the feminine 
instinct of clinging to what is nearest and most 
familiar. It is notably illustrated in the life of 
Mrs. Browning. When she went from England 
to Italy, England became to her almost at once 
a memory, a vision seen through half-closed eyes. 
Her whole affections seemed to concentrate at 
once upon Italy. One would have to make- 
believe very much, before a Scotch or English 
village could put on for him the loveliness of 
Italy. And yet, by taking thought, each may 
find his home richer in beauty than he had 
thought it. 

(2) It is still more necessary to cultivate a 
kindly interest in your kind. Gossip has been 
very much denounced, and there is a kind of 
186 



^ The Secret of Mrs. Farfrae ^ 

gossip which does great mischief. Mrs. Candour 
has her representatives in these days. I doubt, 
however, whether the slaughter of character goes 
on as quickly as in the old time. One does 
occasionally meet an old lady with an abnormal 
passion for tea, and an equally abnormal know- 
ledge of the peerage, both of which seem to 
belong to an earlier period. But kindly gossip 
is the salt of conversation. It is inhuman to 
live in the country and to care nothing for the 
joys and sorrows of your neighbours. People 
love and prize sympathy more than anything 
else, and they will forgive much to a sympathetic 
gossip. The neighbours who never speak of 
them because they do not care to know about 
them are regarded with a just aversion. 

(3) Still it must be admitted that men and 
women whose conversation is merely gossip are 
sure to deteriorate till they become intolerable. 
It is necessary to be in contact with a broader 
life than that of the country parish or the little 
town. Well, there is always the escape of books. 
The mind in a quiet and leisurely life must be 
able to a large extent to feed, not upon itself, 
but upon its own possessions, and to furnish 

187 



^ The Secret of Mrs. Farfrae ^ 

its own delights. The chief misery of an isolated 
life is that in many cases it dwarfs and stunts 
the intellect. It may even kill all intellectual 
curiosity, and that is death indeed. In order 
to prevent this it is wise to carry on a course 
of reading or study. I know a country gentle- 
man who many years ago took up Egyptology. 
He has pursued it with great diligence, and 
has now so good a knowledge of the subject 
that he is able to meet on fairly equal terms 
the best experts. It has been a wonderful 
thing for him in many ways, chiefly because it 
has kept the current of his mind clear, and has 
given him a new interest in life. It has also 
been the means of winning some valuable friend- 
ships. Be it observed that the study would 
have been comparatively useless if it had been 
languidly pursued, but it was carried out with 
earnest perseverance. I should not greatly pity 
any friend in his loneliness, if I knew that he 
had an interest of this kind. I am far from 
saying that young men should imitate Lord 
Lytton's hero, who shut himself up in a country 
house at the age of twenty, that he might read 
the minor Platonists. I do say that every one 

i88 



^ The Secret of Mrs. Farfrae ^ 

should take care, lest they lose by neglect that 
power of finding their pleasure in books and 
thoughts, which is the least alienable perhaps of 
all our possessions, which may be continued to 
us when the most precious things are taken, 
leaving life more than endurable, even happy 
and peaceful. 

(4) I should lay great stress also upon corre- 
spondence. When all is said and done, the chief 
disadvantage of a life in remote parts is the 
want of congenial human intercourse. It is not 
good for a man that he should find everything 
he wants in that way under his own roof There 
is a family selfishness as corroding as an indi- 
vidual selfishness. Now there are many places 
where a man may live for many years and never 
find a true comrade, one to whom he can 
thoroughly open up his mind. The friends of 
his heart are far distant. The correspondence 
that once passed has been neglected, and has 
almost dropped away. One ought to have cer- 
tain things to look forward to every day, and 
the chief thing no doubt will be as a rule the 
letters. You cannot get good letters unless 
you write them. Your post will be pretty much 

189 



^ The Secret of Mrs. Farfrae ^ 

what you make it. Very busy men have no 
time for private correspondence, but most women 
can write, and they ought to write and keep up 
the links between their husbands and their old 
friends until emancipation comes and their 
husbands can take the pen in their own hands. 
I am sure that not half enough is made of 
correspondence as a sweetener and solace of life. 
Most people at certain periods of their life 
have had intimate correspondence, and I appeal 
to them whether they were not greatly helped 
and cheered and soothed, not only by the letters 
they received, but by the letters they wrote. 
Elderly people, in particular, ought to keep their 
friendships and their correspondence in repair. 

(5) But, after all, the great secret of happiness 
is to seek the happiness of others. There is no 
such peace to be found in the world as the 
peace that comes to those who are working for 
the good of their fellow-creatures. A man who 
gives himself truly to the service of the needy 
is never, so far as I have seen, an unhappy man. 
The quest for a selfish happiness will be de- 
feated, but, as we seek to bring brightness into 
the lives of others, our own darkness will be 
190 



^ The Secret of Mrs. Farfrae <!» 

strangely lightened. There is something in this 
world which in the midst of disappointments 
does not disappoint, and 

The man whose eye 
Is ever on himself, doth look on one 
The least of nature's works. 



191 



XIX 
Brilliance 

What do we mean when we speak of a person 
being brilliant ? Perhaps some help to the answer 
will be found in the etymology of the word. 
Brilliant, I believe, comes from beryl, and thus 
brilliancy will mean the quality of a jewel, the 
flashing, lustrous quality. With this clue we may 
consider the question. 

A sharp line must be drawn between brilliancy 
in writing and brilliancy in conversation. It often 
happens that one who writes brilliantly does not 
talk in the same way. There are exceptions, of 
course. Mr. George Meredith, for example, is 
equally brilliant in his books and in his con- 
versation. It happens also that people who are 
brilliant in talk are quiet and tame in writing. 
There is a lustre in their spoken speech, a fresh- 
ness and glow in their thoughts when stirred by 
the stimulus of living presences, which seems 
192 



Brilli 



lance 



somehow to depart when they write for print. 
They cannot dictate, and when they dip their pen 
in ink the life of their mind seems to depart, and 
all becomes conventional. Johnson, no doubt, was 
a great writer, but, save in occasional passages, 
hardly a brilliant writer. In conversation, how- 
ever, his brilliance was incessant. I wish to speak 
rather of brilliancy in talk than of brilliancy in 
writing, and this for a reason which will appear 
immediately. 

The property of a jewel is to flash, and to flash 
unexpectedly, to take different aspects as you take 
it different ways, but always to shine. A few 
people possess this strange power. Those who 
are with them cease to be listless. They are 
eager to watch the gleams of light that flash from 
them in a rayless, unilluminated world. If there 
is a Boswell present to take down their talk, it is 
worth reading when it is reproduced, but not half 
so much worth reading as it was worth hearing ; 
for the brilliant person has a certain radiance 
which comes out in the eyes, in the gestures, 
in the tones of the voice, in the quick, impetuous 
way of speech. It is natural for a jewel to flash, 
and it is natural for the brilliant person to be 

o 193 



'^ Brilliance ^ 

brilliant. It has been said that nobody was ever 
eloquent by trying to be eloquent, but only by 
being so. Grand speeches come only from grand 
thoughts, and passionate speech from passionate 
feeling. You may imitate the phrases of an 
orator, his pomp of words and his rhythm, but 
you cannot imitate his eloquence. Is it not 
Ruskin who says that no man need try to be 
a prophet ? Your business is to go on quietly 
with your hard camp work, and the Spirit will 
come to you in the camp, as it did to Eldad 
and Medad, if you are appointed to have it. If 
you are not appointed to have it, there is nothing 
left but submission. A great element of brilli- 
ancy is that it surprises. The brilliant person 
can compass strange alliances, can bring together 
words that have hitherto been strangers, and see 
the relation between remote facts and make them 
throw light upon one another. He .has almost 
always a certain gift of style. As a rule his 
range of knowledge and observation is wide, but 
perhaps his main power is shown in giving fresh 
colour and significance to what has become pallid, 
unmeaning, or, to say the least, hopelessly 
commonplace. Here De Quincey's dicta about 
194 



Brilli 



ance 



style come in well. Style, says De Quincey, 
has two functions. The first is to brighten the 
intelligibility of the obscure ; the second is to 
regenerate the normal impressiveness of subjects 
that have become dormant to the sensibilities. 
The brilliant person will ordinarily have a copious 
memory for words and facts, but beyond this 
quality is the power to select, the power to 
extricate relations to which others have been 
blind, to refresh and retrace the lineaments that 
have begun to decay and fade. I may seem to 
be confusing brilliancy of speech with brilliancy 
in writing, but it is not so. One of the obscure 
great critics of England has said that eloquence 
is heard and poetry is overheard. Eloquence 
supposes an audience. The poet is unconscious 
of a listener. Poetry is feeling confessed in 
moments of solitude to itself, while eloquence 
pours itself out to other minds, and is magnified 
in its expression by their presence. Is it not 
true that the French are the most eloquent and 
the least poetical of nations ? 

Brilliancy, it need hardly be said, is very rare, 
as rare at least as the most precious jewels. In 
the whole course of my pilgrimage I have met 



Brilli 



lance 



with, perhaps, three persons who might be called 
brilliant in conversation, who in any room and in 
any company would soon draw all eyes and ears. 
That is a small number out of so many, many 
highly and variously gifted. As things are, or as 
things have been, one might expect to find that 
brilliant men are twice as numerous as brilliant 
women. With the changes in education, however, 
I should not be at all surprised if the proportion 
were reversed, and that in no very long time. 
Just because brilliancy is so uncommon, it will 
always be prized, will always make an impression 
greater than perhaps it deserves to make. I read 
in a newspaper the other day that the price of 
diamonds was likely to increase very much. Yet 
a life may be lived in comfort and in peace 
by people who possess no diamonds. As a 
matter of fact, I excessively dislike to see a 
man displaying diamonds in any way, and I think 
the dislike is not uncommon. Oliver Wendell 
Holmes allowed a gentleman to wear a signet 
ring, and one ring ought to be sufficient. I 
tremble to speak of the other sex, but some 
persons at least are of the opinion that very 
few women, if they were wise, would indulge in 
196 



';^ Brilliance %> 

a lavish show of diamonds. Be this as it may, 
however, there is little question that to the end of 
time diamonds will retain their value, and so in 
the same way a brilliant personality will win for 
itself wonder and regard to the end of time, in a 
world that is so drab, so ordinary, so humdrum, so 
commonplace. The person who considers himself 
brilliant may complain that he is not properly 
appreciated. He may comfort himself with the 
maxim, Margaritas ante porcos^ but is he sure that 
he was strewing real pearls ? It is perhaps more 
likely that the pearls were mock pearls than that 
his audience were swine. 

Still, there is a certain drawback to brilliancy. 
That, too, is a jewel's quality. It has its hard- 
ness. Brilliant persons are delightful for the 
time, but one cannot live upon mere brilliancy. 
George Henry Lewes, who was qualified to speak 
on the subject, said very pathetically that in 
life, as in literature, our admiration for mere 
cleverness has a touch of contempt in it, and 
is very unlike the respect paid to character. 
He goes on to affirm that no talent can be 
supremely effective, unless it act in close alliance 
with certain moral qualities. Lewes was much 

197 



^ Brilliance ^ 

more remarkable for cleverness than for char- 
acter : but he knew the better part, even if 
he did not choose it. I used to think that 
Kingsley's line, 

Be good, my child, and let who will be clever, 

might be taken as an insult. I see now that 
I was wrong. Kingsley was not disparaging 
cleverness. What he meant was that, however 
far cleverness may go, life and the happiness of 
life depend upon it very little, while they abso- 
lutely depend upon goodness. It is human 
goodness tried and proved by which we poor 
creatures are enabled to face the storms of 
time. We are glad sometimes to see the jewels 
flashing, but if we never saw them we should 
not miss them much. Without goodness to 
look up to and to lean upon, our strivings 
would soon end. 

And yet all brilliancy is not hard. There 
is a certain form of brilliance which draws out 
in a wonderful way everything that is best in 
others. Some brilliant talkers coruscate and 
coruscate, and care for nothing but the respon- 
sive look and murmur of admiration. There 
198 



"^ Brilliance ^ 

are others, not less gifted than they who listen 
as well as speak, who can take an ordinary 
remark and light it at the fire of their own 
bright spirits, and give it back to the astonished 
speaker irradiated and glorious. That is, indeed, 
a celestial talent, and there are few finer ex- 
periences that come to most of us dull people 
than to have come, whether it be once or twice 
in a lifetime, within its friendly play. 

I had intended to say something about 
brilliant writing, but my space is exhausted. 
The tendency of the day is to depreciate 
brilliance in writing, to speak of it as tinsel, as 
unreal splendour, as mere intellectual fireworks. 
What was called prose poetry has practically 
disappeared. Colour and adornment in style 
are looked upon with considerable suspicion, 
although such writers as Stevenson and Pater 
have given individuality a chance. We are told 
that nowadays style should be simply a trans- 
parent medium for thought. I set little store 
by such doctrine. It is the kind of doctrine 
with which a commonplace generation comforts 
itself. It knows it cannot be brilliant, and it 
says that brilliancy is a censurable and even a 

199 



^ Brilliance ^ 

shameful thing. Nonsense ! Let the brilliant 
writer rise, and he will soon change all that. 
Do not talk about certain styles as dead and 
buried ; do not say that even prose poetry 
will not be revived. Let another Milton rise, 
just as eloquent as the old Milton, and we 
shall listen spellbound with delight and awe 
to his music. We are very tired, it may be 
allowed, of little Macaulays ; but if Macaulay 
were to come back again, we should rush for 
his books as greedily as our fathers did. We 
knew very well when Ruskin departed that there 
was much that went with him, and that precious 
secrets were buried in his grave. The brilliant 
writer, the brilliant talker, the brilliant speaker — 
all of them are needed in our day more than 
they ever were, and will not fail of joyous 
welcome and full reward. 



200 



XX 
On Handwriting 

I HAVE no doubt that character is revealed 
more or less by handwriting. There is, I believe, 
a science of the subject, and books embodying it, 
but I have never read any of the rules, and am 
entirely ignorant of it. If any person who has 
a large correspondence begins to study the hand- 
writing of his correspondents in connection with 
their characteristics otherwise known to him, he 
will find more and more that there is a strange 
harmony. He will even, in time, perhaps, come 
to believe that if he closely studies the hand- 
writing of an unknown correspondent he may be 
able to make some shrewd guesses as to the 
history and the disposition of the writer. He will 
do this, not by the application of rules, but by a 
kind of instinct. You cannot tell a man how to 
fish. An expert angler is hardly ever able to 
put his practical knowledge into propositions and 

201 



On Handwriting 



formulas. I doubt whether a good golfer can 
give hints of much value to other people. He 
knows that he should do this or that in order to 
succeed, but in doing it he does not apply rules, 
but acts from an experience more or less un- 
consciously built up. So that I do not suppose 
my reflections will be of any use to other people, 
though I try to set them down as clearly as I can. 
The great distinction between handwritings 
is that between the educated and the un- 
educated. Broadly speaking, there is an educated 
handwriting and an uneducated, and there are 
grades in education which handwriting reveals. 
But in these days almost everybody is taught up 
to a certain point, and the uneducated hand- 
writing cannot be so well classified. I know just 
one case of a highly educated person writing a 
thoroughly uneducated hand, and I have no doubt 
there is some explanation for it. She is a highly 
cultured lady, and brilliant in conversation. Her 
style, however, when she writes, is poor and 
uncoloured, and her handwriting resembles that 
which I have seen come from workhouses. 
Allowing for this exception, I have never been 
deceived. The educated hand may be a very bad 
202 



On Handwriting 



hand, but it is unmistakable. There is also the 
handwriting of the scholar, which is, as a rule, 
very precise and careful, but not beautiful. There 
is the handwriting of the man of culture, which in 
many cases is very graceful. Dean Church wrote 
to the last a most beautiful hand, a handwriting 
which could not have been owned except by a 
man of the highest refinement and taste. In his 
early days, before he dabbled in journalism, Mr. 
W. H. Mallock also wrote a singularly beautiful 
hand. These two, Dean Church and Mr. Mallock, 
are on the whole the best caligraphers I have ever 
known. When to culture and scholarship there 
is added imagination, it is apt to spoil the hand, 
which becomes then in certain cases sprawling and 
irregular. From Mr. Swinburne's handwriting of 
twenty years ago, I think you could have told 
that he was a poet and a man of genius. Young 
people ought to persevere with their handwriting, 
at least until it becomes an educated handwriting. 
Yet perhaps this is not necessary. If they go on 
educating themselves and mastering new provinces 
of knowledge, they will come inevitably to reveal 
their acquirement by their handwriting. 

There is also in handwriting much unconscious 

203 



On Handwriting 



revelation of character. By far the clearest and 
the most certain is the revelation of what I may 
call, for want of a better name, self-consciousness 
or un-self-consciousness. It would not be a great 
error to say that this is the difference between 
modesty and conceit. Everybody knows this up 
to a certain extent. There is no getting away 
from an affected signature. When a man has to 
write a difficult signature for banknotes or for 
business purposes he may possibly be excused, 
but the man who, in his ordinary communications, 
prepares an elaborate and uniform signature, 
stamps himself not necessarily as a foolish or 
wicked or unfriendly person, but as one who is 
accustomed to think much of himself Young 
men, as well as old, are apt to err in this way. 
I remember some years ago receiving a letter 
from a young man in which the signature occupied 
half a page of ordinary note-paper. I made up 
my mind that there was nothing for that young 
man but to wait and learn. Some years after- 
wards I received another letter from him. The 
signature was still too large, but not abnormally 
so. I was not surprised to hear that he was at 
last beginning to make good progress. When he 
204 



On Handwriting 



becomes a really successful man no doubt his 
signature will be like the signatures of other people. 
There are a few — a very few — literary people who 
write their signature in quite another manner from 
the body of their letters, and every one of them is 
a person with whom vanity is a disease, and very 
nearly a madness. There are many authors who 
do not go so far as this, but go quite far enough 
to show that they are in reality self-conscious. 
They never write their names without reflecting 
that these names are of significance in the world. 
Another very trustworthy indication is the manner 
in which the pronoun " I " is written. On this I 
might say much, but I am afraid of personalities. 
Suffice it that wherever you have a person who 
writes the pronoun " I " just as he would write 
the great letter in the word " Irish," you may 
be tolerably sure of meeting a decent fellow. 
If, on the other hand, the " I " is contorted 
and queer, you are face to face with self-con- 
sciousness at the very least, and probably with 
something worse than that. 

Another fairly safe discrimination in hand- 
writing is that between the trustworthy and the 
untrustworthy. I know some handwritings in 

205 



On Handwriting 



which no untruth, no false vow, no baseness 
of any kind could possibly be written ; just as 
I know faces which tell me in a moment that 
the soul which looks through them may be 
trusted all in all and for ever. There are other 
handwritings so weak, so shifty, so flabby, and so 
unsettled that one wants to be sure before be- 
lieving anything, though I am bound to say 
that often the owners are better than their script. 
But without going so deep as that, you have 
handwritings which tell you that in business 
matters the owner is to be relied on. If he says 
that he will deliver you a manuscript on Tuesday 
at twelve o'clock, you may be quite certain it will 
come, and that it will be decently done. Other 
handwritings suggest that you will get a letter on 
Tuesday at the appointed hour, explaining that 
the author is prostrate with neuralgia, and has 
not been able to do anything. Of course, there is 
illness that is disabling and prostrating, but there 
is illness through which a man can keep on doing 
his work ; and the people I like least in the world 
are the numerous class who believe that when any- 
thing is the matter with them they are at once 
ab.solved from every duty but that of attending to 
206 



On Handwriting 



themselves. I have through many years been 
accustomed to judge questions of this sort merely 
on the indications of handwriting, and I have 
hardly ever found myself mistaken. 

Another distinction of handwriting, which is 
also a very clear one, is that between conciliatory 
and unconciliatory people. I have before my 
mind an example of a handwriting well known to 
me. It would show to all, except very dense 
people, that the writer was of an anxious, winning, 
apologetic, deprecating nature. You can see 
the letters bowing and scraping — sometimes almost 
kneeling. Other handwritings, again, tell you 
that the writer has not thought at all whether he 
will please you or not. He is simply doing what 
he conceives to be his duty. And there are 
handwritings of people whom you instinctively 
know to be deliberately aggravating. They are 
in the habit of annoying their own people at 
home. They are accustomed to nag ; the habit 
has become second nature to them, and they try 
it with editors, who, as a rule, are not distinguished 
for patience. The ideal handwriting is the hand- 
writing which shows the gentleman — not anxiously 
conciliatory, but still not willing to give offence. 

207 



On Handwriting 



I will mention but one more distinction, and 
that is between the strong and the weak. There 
are handwritings which show clearly that the 
writer will see a thing through, will not easily be 
daunted by difficulties, and will accept defeat only 
at the sword's point. There are other hand- 
writings so weak and so characterless that you are 
sure the possessors will never win a fight. And 
there are others, and this is a very common type 
of character, which show what I may call weak 
strength. The writers imagine their achievements 
very vividly, and go at them with a rush, but when 
they meet with determined opposition they soon 
give in. This kind of character is shown in the 
use of thick ink, broad pens, and large letters 
breaking into small letters at the end of a word. 

I conclude with some cautions. Handwriting 
depends to a great extent on the teacher. Ladies 
were' taught in the old days to write an angular 
hand. They are now taught, apparently, for the 
most part to write a large black hand, such as 
might be produced by quills. The old style was 
the more feminine, and the new style is perhaps the 
more legible. But it is difficult to draw any sure 
conclusion from the writing of young persons. 
208 



On Handwriting 



As time goes on, however, things clear themselves 
up, and the character finds its way into the work. 
Of handwriting done in the way of business not 
much can be said. The writer knows for what 
purpose the work is to be used, and does not 
indulge in individual flourishes. And there are 
a great many people also of whose handwriting 
you can only say that it suggests an overworked 
and hurried life. You can see that the writer 
is working up to or beyond the limit of his 
powers, and that when he sits down to pen 
the letter the whole thought in his mind is to 
finish it, seal it up, and send it off as soon as 
possible. 



209 



XXI 
The Happy Life 

If I have previously written on this subject, I 
make no apology for returning to it. A man 
is constantly led to think of it anew by fresh 
observation, and a small experience of mine in 
the North lately has suggested one or two ideas. 

In the first place, we must not make the 
mistake of thinking that the smooth, easy, 
vegetating life is the best. It may be so in 
the negative sense. By its very definition it is 
freed from the higher pains and pangs. But 
then with these it misses the greater, rarer 
ecstasies that reveal the possibilities of the soul. 
Is it true to say that 

One crowded year of glorious life 
Is worth an age without a name ? 

It may be true. The remembrance of a brief 
grand blessedness may be sweeter and more 
2IO 



The Happy Life 



precious than years upon years of quiet, un- 
interrupted content. There is a content which 
it is possible to enjoy by suppressing capacity, 
by ceasing from thought, from interest, from 
effort, from ambition — the content that comes 
to those who are perfectly satisfied if they can 
eat comfortably and sleep comfortably, and 
escape disturbance. But even without Christianity 
man was noble enough to discover that this 
was unworthy. In his remarkable essay on 
the Ancient Stoics, Sir Alexander Grant 
rightly lays stress on the profound truth which 
Seneca perceived — the truth, namely, that the 
mind and the will evoked into consciousness, 
and provoked even by suffering, are a greater 
possession than the blessings, if they were 
attainable, of a so-called golden age and state 
of nature. The old picture of mankind in a 
state of innocence, dwelling together in some 
far-off island, where every impulse was virtuous 
and every impulse was to be obeyed, was 
rejected by the Stoics. They .said that in 
these primitive times there wa.s, in fact, no 
wisdom. If men did wise things, they did 
them unconsciously. They had not even virtue ; 

211 



The Happy Life 



neither justice, nor prudence, nor temperance, 
nor fortitude. Seneca railed at the actual state 
of the world, but he saw that the remedy was 
placed rather in the power of the will, in the 
effort to progress, than in dreams of a bygone 
state of innocence. Amongst modern writers 
the most powerful exponent of this view, so 
far as I know, is Mrs. Oliphant. The burden 
of all her teaching is that it is infinitely better 
to live rather than to exist, even though life 
may bring its full tale of agonies and failures 
and regrets. She, too, had her own sharp 
sufferings, and perhaps at last her indomitable 
spirit yielded and she felt it was good to die. 
Yet to the last she held to it unwaveringly 
that these sufferings had been good for her, that 
blessings had come with them and after them, 
and that they had awakened in her thoughts 
and feelings which it was good to have aroused, 
thoughts and feelings which to leave dormant 
would have been to impair vitality. It is not 
wise, it is not right that we should be willing 
to contract and deaden our natures, to see 
them shrink, dwindle, draw themselves within 
meaner lines every day, simply because their 
212 



The Happy Life 



development is accomplished at the cost of 
inevitable and even, it may be, very sharp 
sorrows. 

In the second place, there can be no doubt 
that the way to happiness can only be found if 
it is not deliberately sought. To seek happiness 
is almost always to miss it. Always in the 
long run there is something higher, nearer, and 
more commanding than our own happiness. 
There are the claims of duty and of love. I 
do not know whether, for practical purposes, we 
can express it better than by saying that we 
ought to seek in the first place the happiness 
of others ; and, as has been finely said, we shall 
discover that, if we bring happiness into the 
lives of other people, we shall not be able to 
keep . it out of our own. This is true, and yet 
it is a truth that surely needs most careful 
guarding. I have often seen it explained in 
the wrong way. It does not mean that we are 
to make other people happy by indulging them, 
by flattering them, by helping them to the 
things that they wish. Human nature being 
what it is, this is impossible, for as a matter 
of fact, most of us are injured by flattery. We 

213 



The Happy Life 



are not injured but benefited by the honest 
commendation of what we have honestly done. 
But we are injured by all eulogy which has 
not been earned. Neither is it good for 
grown-up people, any more than for children, 
that they should be indulged. From a friend 
one expects a kind interpretation of our actions, 
a generous allowance for our failures ; but he 
is no true friend who encourages us in a wrong 
course of action, and makes us believe that we 
are upon the right, track, when in reality we have 
greatly erred. No, the way to make others 
happy is to serve them, to give them all the 
help in our power, to develop their best, to 
believe in them, to encourage them when they 
are taking their slow and difficult steps upward, 
and to warn them when they are deliberately 
choosing the poorer and baser way. They may 
not like the warning, but there are occasions 
when it ought to be given, and when to be 
silent is to betray the obligations of friendship. 
Everybody can see this in the case of children, 
unless perhaps some parents in the case of their 
own children. It is cruel to allow a child to 
have what it wishes, to go on with a will 
214 



The Happy Life 



unchecked till it becomes almost too strong for 
checking. It is the business of a wise parent 
gently to repress, to teach, to correct, to dis- 
courage as well as to encourage and praise. So 
the man or woman who goes grinning about 
the world and prophesying smooth things may 
earn a certain worthless kind of popularity, but 
can never receive the highest guerdon of friend- 
ship and of love. To " truth it in love," as 
the Apostle Paul says, is the highest possible 
service we can render to another. 

Compare two lives. In the one life a man 
sets himself to enjoy what is best, to see the 
best and to know it, to have all the pleasurable 
experiences that are within his range, to ex- 
perience the delights of stimulating conversation, 
to let out the hours of each day to his own 
advantage. Another turns his back upon such 
things. He fulfils his daily task, and in the 
hours that are at his own disposal he seeks to 
uplift the wretched and the poor. You look 
at his life and you can see how impoverished 
and stunted it has been on many sides. You 
observe how as the years pass this voluntary 
work of his assumes greater and greater pro- 

215 



The Happy Life 



portions in his mind. He begins to be more 
absorbed with it even than with his business. 
Though he does the allotted work well, his 
heart is elsewhere. I should like you to take 
the two lives and compare them at seventy. 
You will then find which has been the best 
and the most rewarding, which has stored up 
most sunshine in the passing. The first as the 
end draws near is apt to be weary. The best 
wine has been drunk, the familiar faces have 
vanished or grown rebuking and old, a few poor 
japes are all that remain out of the brilliant 
conversation. The other is peaceful, with a 
mellow light lying over it, and not without 
some humble assurance that it has not been 
lived altogether in vain. 

But you say the highest life is neither of 
these. The highest life must of necessity bear 
upon it the print of the nails. There must be 
sacrifice in it. In that curious book, now 
apparently forgotten, Renan's Philosophical 
Dialogues, there is a noteworthy passage on 
immortality : " As for myself, I do not precisely 
claim immortality ; but I should like two things 
— first, that my sacrifices to goodness and to 
2l6 



The Happy Life 



truth should not have been offered up to blank 
and empty space. (I do not want to be repaid 
for them, but I want them to fulfil some 
purpose.) And secondly, that what little I 
have done should meet with somebody's acknow- 
ledgment. I want God's esteem, nothing more. 
This is exorbitant, is it ? Do we reproach the 
dying soldier with taking an interest in the 
issue of the battle, and wishing to know whether 
his general-in-chief is pleased with him ? " One 
of Renan's sharpest critics found great fault 
with him for this. He said that Renan had 
no right to speak of well-doing as a sacrifice. 
He adds that, when we perform an act of 
justice to our own detriment, we sacrifice some- 
thing, but not the self proper, because the self 
proper, the higher nature, was on the contrary 
indulged. Why, then, should it claim as a 
reward for its indulgence a second gratification 
in consideration for the first ? The individual 
might as well claim to be repaid in heaven for 
the steaks which he consumed on earth, on the 
score that their purchase involved a pecuniary 
sacrifice. This is ingenious, but it will not bear 
examination. If the higher nature were sole in 

217 



The Happy Life 



us, things would be very much more simple. If 
we were pure spirits, and not flesh and blood 
also, then things would be simpler still. But 
these are not the facts, and the facts being 
what they are, it remains that, in the highest 
life, there must be an element of sacrifice. It 
is true, however, that a great deal that is called 
sacrifice does not in the very least deserve the 
name, and the man to whom all well-doing is 
sacrifice may wisely tremble for the supremacy 
of his nobler self 



2l8 



XXII 
The Man in the Street 

I HAVE lately come to know " The Man in the 
Street." He is, let it be understood, an indi- 
vidual with a name, a surname, and an address 
in London. There are any number of men in 
the street ; but this one, I am convinced, is 
typical of all. When you understand him, you 
understand the rest. When you hear his judg- 
ment, you may be sure that he is speaking for 
at least a million. In order properly to get at 
his mind, you should talk to him on his native 
heath. My last interview with him was in the 
study where I am writing, and he was less vocal 
than he would have been in his proper element. 
In Trollope's excellent story. The Small House at 
Allingfon, we are told that the heroine would 
never interview Hopkins, the gardener, without 
alluring him out of his own domain into the 
overawing neighbourhood of chairs and tables. 

219 



^ The Man in the Street ^ 

" I always like," said Lily, " to get him into the 
house, because he feels a little abashed by the 
chairs and tables, or perhaps it is the carpet that 
is too much for him. Out on the gravelled walks 
he is such a terrible tyrant, and in the greenhouse 
he almost tramples on one." But the man in 
the street talks best in the street. 

" The Man in the Street " is a pure Cockney, 
born within the sound of Bow Bells. He had 
a rough time in his youth — a poor education 
at a cheap, cruel little school, and an early 
and bitter apprenticeship. All this made him 
thoroughly familiar with the streets of London. 
He became sharp, ingenious, and resourceful. 
By patient diligence he has now reached a fairly 
good position, though the nature of his work 
keeps him very much in the street still. There 
is little in London that he does not know. He 
has spoken in his time to people of every kind. 
His eyes and his ears have been thoroughly 
trained, and he is by no means a person to 
be despised. 

The first thing to say about " The Man in the 
Street" is that material interests hold by far the 
first place in his mind. He has lived all his days, 
220 



^ The Man in the Street ^ 

and is living to-day, in an atmosphere of con- 
tinual and remorseless competition. He knows 
very well that, if he makes a stumble, he will be 
immediately trampled down. He knows that he 
cannot afford to miss a single chance ; he is 
holding on, as it were, by the nails. There are 
very few businesses in London nowadays that can 
be left to themselves for a single week. New 
enterprises, new energy, new ideas, must be put 
into them constantly, else they will soon dis- 
appear. " The Man in the Street " is no whiner. 
When misfortunes come he is calmly composed. 
He takes his reverses like a man, and does not 
complain. When he succeeds, unless the success 
be on a great scale, he does not boast. He is 
aware of the mixture of good and evil in life, 
and tries to keep an equal mind. In this he is 
much helped by a curious but keen sense of 
humour. His humour has a sardonic turn about 
it ; but, such as it is, it fortifies him. He tho- 
roughly enjoys London — the crowded streets, the 
rush of business — and would be miserable in the 
country. Philosophical, full of mother wit, he 
gets through his life, day by day, patiently 
putting up with a thousand rebuffs, and keeping 

221 



"^ The Man in the Street ^ 

his head above water to the last, besides paying 
premiums to make a provision for his family 
when he dies. 

" The Man in the Street " has a great and quiet 
belief in his country. He is deeply moved by 
our reverses and trials : he may condemn the 
Government and the officers ; but he is lenient 
and says little. He knows too well how many 
of his ov/n careful plans have failed, to be hard 
on others who have not succeeded. He is fully 
determined on seeing the war through, and if it 
were of any use he would go out himself and 
expose his life in defence of his country. What 
is gnawing at his heart, though he says little 
about it, is the apprehansion of what is going 
to happen to his business during the next six 
months or so. His thoughts of the economies 
he can effect have made another wrinkle on his 
brow. But he has no fear of defeat, and would 
go on to the last sixpence and the last drop of 
blood before he would yield. Foreign nations, 
he thinks, completely fail to understand the 
English mind — slow to move and hardened by 
threats and dangers to the temper of steel. 
" The Man in the Street " is quietly but intensely 
222 



^ The Man in the Street ^ 

and affectionately loyal. He worships Queen 
Alexandra, thinks the King is a good fellow, 
and detests attacks on the Royal Family. 

In politics, " The Man in the Street " is a Con- 
servative. He used to hate Socialism, but he 
now despises it. He has a firm conviction that 
trade is a great thing, and that trade is not good 
when the Liberals are in power. His favourite 
statesman is Lord Salisbury. Next to him comes 
Lord Rosebery. To Home Rule, "The Man in 
the Street" is so immovably opposed that you 
cannot get him to discuss it. He simply shakes 
his head, as if it were criminal for intelligent 
persons to talk of such a thing. He thinks 
that Mr. Gladstone was a wonderful man, but 
he never believed in him. He likes neither 
the London School Board nor the London 
County Council. He is firmly convinced that 
children are in many cases much over-educated, 
and that, if they want extra education, their 
parents should pay for it. Many measures have 
been passed in his name which he has not 
approved of, and he would be glad to see them 
rescinded, though he will not move that way 
unless the real leader of men calls him. 

223 



"^ The Man in the Street ^ 

" The Man in the Street " is not an enthusiast. 
Life has dealt him many blows, and he does not 
expect much from it. Being in the street and 
at work, he is httle at home. He approves of 
marriage as the best thing for a man, but he 
is by no means enthusiastic on the subject. He 
is made to feel every day the responsibilities of 
a wife and children. I am afraid that he is not 
religious, although he may have a religion of his 
own. It is certain at least that he disapproves 
of an aggressive irreligion. Parsons, as he calls 
them, he especially and particularly despises and 
distrusts. The scorn with which he regards their 
discussions about incense and vestments is too 
great for him to express. But I fear he goes 
further than that, and thinks them hypocrites. 
He very rarely goes to church, and never of his 
own will. In business he dislikes religious people 
extremely, and would much rather deal with those 
who make no profession of being better than other 
people. 

In the matter of amusements, " The Man in the 

Street " prefers the music-hall. He likes variety, 

and enjoys the privilege of smoking, and it means 

much to him that no great demand is made upon 

224 



4|» The Man in the Street ^ 

his attention. I think he very rarely reads books. 
Mr. Jerome attracted him some years ago, and 
he was particularly entertained by Three Men in 
a Boat. He knows Rudyard Kipling's name very 
well, and likes his music-hall ditties, but he has 
never read any book by Kipling, though he may 
have tried to. On the other hand he is a diligent 
reader of newspapers. Till lately his favourite 
journal was the Daily Telegraph. Nowadays 
he reads also the Daily Mail. He reads the 
evening papers, the Star, the Evening News, 
the Echo, and the Sun ; and sometimes, though 
rarely, he will buy a copy of the Globe or the 
Westminster Gazette. 

On the whole, it is not easy to judge " The 
Man in the Street." You find, when you get 
to know him, that he cheerfully pinches himself 
for wife and children, and that the dearest of 
all to him in the whole world is a little cripple 
daughter. He may be seen at the end of a 
hard day buying a toy to make the child's 
heart glad. He can appreciate real kindliness 
of nature, and in his heart he loves dis- 
interestedness. I remember long ago reading, 
in an old newspaper, an account of the way in 

(^ 225 



^ The Man in the Street '^ 

which a London crowd showed its admiration 
of Garibaldi. " The Man in the Street " by the 
nature of his life becomes cautious, observant, 
reticent, and even hard to appearance, but I 
believe when you get at his heart that you 
find him patient, constant, and latently generous 
and affectionate. His indomitable courage and 
tenacity the world may yet come to know. 



226 



XXIII 
Ihe 7j^%\. of Life 

When I have a little holiday I like to read 
biographies. It is good in the brief pauses of 
life to bethink one's self — to consider the drift 
and the end. A true life story helps you to 
do this. It happened this Easter that I found, 
in the circulating library, Julian Hawthorne's 
strange book on his father and mother, entitled 
Nathaniel Hawthorne and his Wife. I had 
read it years ago twice at least, and very care- 
fully, and was ashamed to find how new it 
was — new, I mean, not in the details, but in 
the general conception of the whole. The ideal 
biography should begin with a very clear 
chronological table, showing at a glance how 
the life was divided. For want of this we mis- 
conceive — we do not see how events are spread 
about or crowded together in a space of years. 
I think I have read as much of Hawthorne, and 

227 



The Zest of Life 



as much about him, as most people. But some- 
how it never occurred to me to think how his 
Hfe was parted. I was rather inclined to agree 
with Henry James, whose opinion is quoted 
approvingly by Professor Seeley, that Hawthorne 
was a comfortable, prosperous person, and any- 
thing but an unromantic visionary. The facts 
are against this. Mr. Julian Hawthorne's book 
contains things that should never have been 
printed by a son, or even by a friend. But it 
masses the life, so to speak, rightly, and gives 
both a painful impression and a salutary lesson. 

It is surely a great thing to keep up the zest 
of life. Life is nothing if it loses interest. It 
was once said by a shrewd critic of good old 
Dr. Adam Clarke, the commentator, that his 
heart to the last leapt up when he beheld a 
rainbow in the sky. So his grey hairs and 
his many years were to be coveted. Not so 
the days of which it has to be said that there 
is no pleasure in them. 

Now, the peculiar thing about Hawthorne is 

that, years before he died, he completely lost 

the zest of life. He was only sixty when he 

passed away. He had apparently everything to 

228 



The Zest of Life 



make him happy — the fullest domestic content, 
a splendid fame, a clear conscience, many warm 
friends, leisure, competence, and unimpaired 
powers. He had retired with his wife and 
children to the home of his own choosing at 
Concord. He did not wish to leave it, he had 
no definite complaint to make, and yet years 
before the end he began to pine away in hope- 
less dejection. His wife, who adored him, 
cleverly contrived that he should go to the 
seaside with his son, and she writes him in 
this significant way : " I do not know how to 
impress you with adequate force concerning the 
absolutely inspiring effect of your absence ! I 
have been weighed to the earth by my sense 
of your depressed energies and spirits, in a way 
from which I tried in vain to rally. I could 
not sit in the house and think about it, and 
so I kept as much as possible at work. Of 
all trials this is the heaviest to me — to see 
you so apathetic, so indifferent, so hopeless, so 
unstrung." This went on and grew worse and 
worse. He no longer seemed to find any 
sufficient interest in life. " I have been," he 
wrote to his friend Stoddard, " a happy man, 

229 



The Zest of Life 



and yet I do not remember any one moment 
of such happy conspiring circumstances that I 
could have rung a joy bell at it." This went 
on and on till at last Hawthorne was induced 
to go away with his devoted friend Pierce, and 
the end came peacefully. 

How is this to be explained ? Not by ill- 
ness. Illness is not necessarily depressing. It 
is depressing when it takes away the strength 
needed to fulfil a trust faithfully. Let the 
burden of that trust be lifted, and the heart 
leaps up. I admit that certain forms of illness 
do lead to melancholy, and perhaps Hawthorne's 
time in Rome may have injured him ; but 
there is no evidence. It was not any sense 
of failure, for Hawthorne was quite aware of 
his own greatness, and coveted no man's laurels. 
It was most assuredly no disappointment of the 
affections, for Hawthorne's whole heart went 
out to his own, as theirs to his. What then 
was the reason of this failure to rejoice in the 
wonder and bloom of the world, in the richness 
of God's special gifts to him ? 

My theory is that it came from a sunless youth. 
Let us look at the facts. Hawthorne lived some 
230 



The Zest of Life 



sixty years. Of these thirty-eight were spent 
in loneliness, in obscurity, and in poverty. I have 
been in Salem, I know the surroundings of his 
childhood ; but one must understand the intense 
gloom of all that was nearest him to feel how it 
must have weighed on a sensitive spirit. Haw- 
thorne could not have been conscious of his own 
genius ; but in eager America every one went 
ahead, and he made no progress year after year, 
till Sophia Peabody came his way, and life 
lightened. The day was far spent when he 
married her. Thirty-eight out of his sixty years 
were gone. He was forty-six when he wrote 
The Scarlet Letter, and won his great triumph. 
It is curious to note that the books on which his 
fame rests were written between this and his 
fiftieth year — roughly speaking, in three years. 
He then had his time of fame, was in England 
and in Rome, saw much and was made much of, 
and had a little pleasure doubtless for a few years. 
Then he came back to sink into despondency and 
die. I think his best years were those after his 
marriage, when he drudged in anxious, happy 
poverty at the Salem Custom House. 

The moral is that childhood and youth should 

231 



The Zest of Life 



be made happy as far as possible. Armed with 
the memory and experience of happy years, a 
man may meet with unimpaired strength the 
trials that are sure to come. Break his spirit by 
sunlessness and suppression at the beginning, and 
he loses the power to resist, the power to enjoy. 
Only the power of suffering remains — and some- 
times the power to die. 

I find in Dr. Bain's " Mental and Moral 
Science," a book which is full of just and acute 
observations on human life and conduct, the 
following passage : — " The happiness of our later 
life is in great part made up of the pleasurable 
memories of early years. The early period of 
life, so favourable to acquirement generally, is 
adapted to the storing up of pleasures and pains. 
The same pleasure happening in youth and in 
middle age will not be equally remembered as 
a cheering association in advanced life. The 
joys of early years have thus an additional value. 
A pinched, severe, and ascetic bringing up will 
surely depress the tone of the whole future 
life ; scarcely any amount of subsequent good 
fortune will suffice to redress the waste." 

232 



XXIV 
Good Manners 

The other afternoon I had a chance of meeting 
a man whose name is at present on every one's 
Hps. I came to the conclusion that he was the 
finest specimen I had ever seen of the thorough- 
bred EngHsh gentleman. This suggested some 
thoughts on a subject, which in the eighteenth 
century was the favourite theme of moralists, 
but is now considerably neglected. I refer to the 
question of good manners. 

Good manners must spring from a certain 
inner fountain of truth and honour and tender- 
ness. This is the beginning, and this is the 
end. To a certain extent, and even to a very 
large extent, good manners are learned from 
converse with good society, and it may be that 
even manuals of etiquette have their uses. But 
it is easy to prove that something more is 
needed. Dr. Johnson has described for us a 



Good Manners 



manner of perfect address : " I soon discovered 
that he possessed some signs of graciousness 
and attraction, which books had not taught ; . . . 
that he had the power of obliging those whom 
he did not benefit ; that he diffused upon his 
cursory behaviour and most trifling actions a 
gloss of softness "and delicacy, by which every 
one was dazzled ; and that, by some occult 
method of captivation, he animated the timorous, 
softened the supercilious, and opened the re- 
served. I could not but repine at the inele- 
gance of my own manners, which left me no 
hopes but not to offend, and at the inefficacy 
of rustic benevolence, which gained no friends 
but by real service." But it does not follow 
that a man who shines in company and among 
his equals necessarily possesses good manners. 
The test is that he should be courteous to all ; 
courteous to his equals, to those above him, 
and to those beneath him ; courteous in society, 
and equally courteous in his own home circle. 
Whatever is artificial, whatever is not part of 
the very nature, will break and fail at a point 
of strain. Often it happens that men are 
charming in society and boors at home. Some- 



Good Manners 



times a man shines among his own people, and 
is overbearing and irritable in the outer world. 
It was so with the great Earl of Chatham, who 
neither won the personal regard of his Sovereign, 
nor conciliated the good-will of the House of 
Commons. When he failed at last to brow- 
beat his colleagues, he hastily threw up the 
seals of office and retired into private life. He 
had the excuse of bodily ailment, for he was 
racked by gout and suffered severely from 
breathlessness. Yet at home he was the most 
amiable of men, loving his wife and doting 
upon his children. It was well, but it was not 
enough. I have seen it said by no contemp- 
tible authority that, in order to have good 
manners, a man must be in a position where 
favours can be conferred. He ought to feel 
that he can oblige others. This induces a 
certain graciousness which comes naturally only 
to such an one. I do not believe this in the 
very least. There is no one so poor that he 
cannot do a kindness. The highest and the 
firmest are subject to the power of a kind word 
or an unkind. In P. S. Worsley's translation 
of the Odyssey, in some respects the most 



Good Manners 



delightful of the translations, there is a perfect 
line which is also a perfect rendering, " Love 
can make a little gift excel." Some of the 
finest examples of courtesy may be found among 
the humblest, though I fully recognise that some 
races have a certain natural grace, which may 
be admired and envied, but which it is hard 
to imitate. Once more, an essential condition of 
good manners is sincerity ; and that takes us 
back to the fountain. A man should have 
nothing to hide ; he should have no pretence 
to make ; he should never affect to be what he 
is not, or to know when he is ignorant. The 
least suspicion of falsehood or concealment 
will undo the manner. Miss Austen acutely 
notes that Emma could tell when Mr. Knightly 
came to a dinner party in a shabby conveyance. 
He was flustered by the consciousness that he 
had done something beneath his position in 
the world. 

An essential condition of the perfect manner 
is the absence of self-consciousness. There is 
a kind of self-consciousness that is most ex- 
cusable, and sometimes pretty and attracting. 
It is the shyness of the young. This often 
236 



Good Manners 



comes from the feeling that they are not under- 
stood, and that they have not the means of 
making themselves understood. They do not 
possess, or at least they do not know how to 
handle, the weapons of society. Sometimes it 
has a less worthy source. It springs from a 
great egotism. Still, on the whole, the charitable 
view may wisely be taken, provided the shyness 
does not last too long. Young people should 
be quick enough to see that their elders are 
not scrutinising them and judging them, as 
they imagine. Elderly people who retain their 
shyness are, as a rule, distinctly disagreeable. 
When great personages, who have been un- 
popular through life, on account of their rude, 
brusque manners, pass away, the newspapers 
explain that they meant very well, but that 
they were shy. These explanations are seldom 
felt to be satisfactory. Egotism is inconsistent 
with good manners. I need hardly say that a 
person who is always thinking about etiquette 
is sure to make blunders, and to convey an 
impression of vulgarity. The true gentleman 
is infinitely above such paltriness. He is not 
thinking about himself ; he is thinking about 

237 



Good Manners 



others. He is not miserably comparing his 
station and his fortune with those of the people 
he meets. He meets them as a gentleman 
meets ladies and gentlemen, and his business is 
to give and receive what pleasure he can. 

Sometimes, in company, it is one's business 
to give, and more frequently it is one's business 
to receive. For example, there are certain 
occasions on which a well-bred man will find it 
his duty to talk. He is among a circle of 
tongue-tied people. His hostess is uneasy, and 
feels that things are not going well. There is 
little talk, and that little is forced and artificial. 
Then good manners prescribe the duty of speech, 
of an endeavour to thaw the frosty atmosphere. 
No doubt this is difficult. I have a friend who 
is certainly not loquacious, and is conscious of 
this fact. He once visited New Orleans, and 
was greatly impressed by the cemeteries there. 
It occurred to him that, at any pause in con- 
versation, he would skilfully lead up to and 
introduce a description of the cemeteries in New 
Orleans. Wonderful as these cemeteries are, I 
am afraid they became more and more wonder- 
ful every time he pictured them. One night 

238 



Good Manners 



he thought himself peculiarly successful in talking 
about them to his neighbour at dinner. She 
heard him out, and then responded with the 
fearful words, " I was born and brought up in 
New Orleans." Since then I believe my friend 
has declined all invitations to dinner parties, 
but he is on the verge of another and, I trust, 
safer theme. I have often wondered whether 
the best talk comes in dialogue or in a small 
circle of congenial spirits, but I have never asked 
whether it comes in a society, where some are 
strangers and others very nearly strangers. For 
my part, I agree with Bulwer Lytton, who says 
somewhere that in a circle of friends there is a 
temptation to attempt cleverness, and that the 
worst talk is always that which tries to be clever. 
" Even in the talk of Dr. Johnson, as recorded 
by Boswell, the finest things are those which 
he said to Boswell when nobody was by, and 
which he could just as well have said in the 
Hebrides." Still, something may be done by 
a kind-hearted man who is not stupid, even in 
a mixed company. For one thing, he may 
listen when the talk has made some commence- 
ment. It is astonishing how men, otherwise 



Good Manners 



virtuous, fail in the art of listening. A public 
speaker can succeed only if his audience attend. 
If they rudely interrupt, he cannot do himself 
justice. In a hushed and eager audience he finds 
himself, and often is stimulated to say things, 
above his natural level. So it is in talk. If 
you have a good listener, if you are sure that 
you are being attended to with interest, and 
that you will be allowed to finish, even very 
commonplace talkers will sensibly brighten. A 
wise man has said that to appear well pleased 
with those you are engaged with is the secret 
of social success. 

It is an essential of good manners that they 
should always be maintained. Who are the 
worst-liked people in the world ? Not, I think, 
those who are persistently rough and discourteous. 
They often get the credit of very kind hearts 
beneath their outward harshness. The people 
who are thoroughly detested are the people who 
at one time treat you with effusive civility, 
and at another meet you with a cold stare. 
Such people are easily discovered, but apparently 
they cannot discover themselves ; and I think 
it may be said that however numerous their 
240 



Good Manners 



acquaintances may be, they have no friends. 
I do not say that we can always be quite the 
same. Moods and feelings come and go, even 
in the strongest. One day you are well and 
bright ; another day you are ill and in pain. 
It is perhaps impossible to be just the same 
in one condition as in another, and I fancy, for 
most of us, the safe rule in days of mental or 
physical suffering is to say as little as possible, 
and to keep as much as may be out of other 
people's way. Still, we can do our best. We 
should try to be constant in our ways. If we 
have taken what we think reasonable offence 
at the doings of a friend, we ought not to 
show it by an icy manner. It is our business 
to explain to our friend where he has apparently 
come short, and to hear what he says about 
it. In all probability with his explanation the 
misunderstanding will pass like a summer cloud. 

It ought not to be necessary to say that 
good manners forbid all allusions to disagreeable 
subjects. And yet it is wonderful how this 
rule is transgressed and forgotten, by men and 
women who would be very much insulted if 
they were accused of vulgarity. Want of 

R 241 



Good Manners 



sympathy is vulgarity. If a man has under- 
gone a great and humiliating reverse, nobody 
but a boor would talk of it while the thing was 
fresh. Of course, this does not mean that an 
intimate friend should not speak of it. I am 
speaking of general society. But even after 
the misfortune is years old, even after the sharp 
sting of it has ceased, it ought not to be touched. 
It is wonderful how an inconsiderate word will 
give life to past sorrows and mortifications. 
" You are looking very ill to-day." I have 
known a remark of that kind, made of a 
morning in a railway train, sicken the heart of 
a City man through all the long day. Young 
people are gloriously insolent in the way they 
sometimes talk about age. They will refer 
to a man of sixty as an old man, when there 
are men and women in the room well over 
sixty, but unwilling to admit they are old. 
These things appear trivial, and I know there 
are many of us who do not mind in the least 
if they are told that they are looking old or 
looking ill, or that an abusive article about 
them has appeared in a newspaper. But that 
is not the point. Dr. Johnson once said to 
242 



Good Manners 



Topham Beauclerk that he had never been 
pained by anything he said to him, but he 
had often been pained by seeing his intention 
to give pain. And it must be remembered 
that the comfort of life turns very much upon 
small things. There is a pleasant sense of 
safety in the company of some people. You 
know they will not say anything to fret and 
chafe you. In the company of other people 
you are sure to receive a wound, and no wonder 
you should shun that company. In the old 
days the people of Nantucket had an enjoyment 
which they called Squantum. A party of ladies 
and gentlemen went to one of the famous 
watering-places and had a happy day together. 
The principal rules were that no one was to 
speak of disagreeable affairs, no one was to take 
offence at a joke, and every one was expected 
to do his and her part towards creating a 
general laugh. " Care is thrown to the wind, 
politics discarded, war ignored, pride humbled, 
stations levelled, wealth scorned, virtue exalted, 
and — this was Squantum." 

Great discrimination should be shown in asking 
questions. There is one way of asking questions 



Good Manners 



which is the height of good manners ; another 
way which is the height of bad manners. To 
draw out shy and reticent persons, and to enable 
them to bring out the best that is in them, is 
an act of grand courtesy ; and very frequently 
this can only be accomplished by asking them 
questions. They have one subject on which 
they can dilate to the advantage of their 
hearers, but they have not the art of bringing 
in this subject skilfully, and so they pass often 
a dull, unhappy evening. All they need is a 
chance. Often, however, the asking of questions 
may be grossly offensive. There are people who 
will ask you the amount of your income ; they 
will ask you to give your opinion on people you 
do not care to speak of, and so on through 
all the varieties of impoliteness. In order to ask 
questions well you must have a genuine interest 
in the answer — I should almost say a genuine 
interest in the people to whom you are speaking. 
Any feigned interest is sure to be discovered. 

And this brings me to my last remark. For 

good manners it is necessary to consider and 

to remember. A lady, let us suppose, is happy 

in the possession of a little daughter. A 

244 



Good Manners 



gentleman visits her home, and is introduced to 
the child. He meets his hostess some months 
after and asks with great effusiveness, " How is 
the son and heir ? " There is worse than that. 
I have known people ask about the health of 
a little child who was dead — who had taken 
much sunshine with her. Such want of thought 
is almost indistinguishable from brutality. But 
if you seek information from people you must 
try to remember it, not ask it over again. It 
is an unmistakable sign of vulgarity not to 
remember accurately the names of your friends 
and acquaintances. It is not good to misspell 
their names ; it is not good to ask them the 
same questions each time you meet them. Tact 
does more to smooth life than other qualities 
that are highly esteemed, and tact is very much 
a matter of thoughtfulness and recollection. So 
we end at the beginning. There must be the 
fountain for good manners. All veneering will 
come off ; but the soul that is gentle, sympathetic, 
faithful, and pitiful, will reveal itself unconsciously 
in all its intercourse with the world. 

I am not preaching a sermon, but one's 
mind returns to St. Paul's great chapter on 

245 



Good Manners 



Charity, and to the Imitation of Christy of which 
Fontenelle's fine eulogy may be recalled : " The 
most beautiful book that ever came from the 
hand of man, since not from his hands came 
the Gospel." 



246 



XXV 
On Growing Old 

People who write about growing old do not, as 
a rule, take the theme very seriously. They talk 
about it and joke about it, and expect to be met 
by pleasant disclaimers, and even to be told that 
they are younger, and looking younger, than 
ever. Though middle-age has its drawbacks and 
burdens, and though its burdens are growing 
heavier in these days, it has its pleasures too, in 
a fairly successful life. A middle-aged man who 
has had good fortune begins at a certain stage of 
his progress to be aware of it. He is consulted 
on weighty subjects ; he may be asked to discharge 
honourable functions or to occupy important 
positions. Such honours do not elate him, but 
looking back on an obscure and struggling life, 
he sees that he has come nearer the realisation 
of his hopes than he ever anticipated in any sober 
moment. A certain deference is paid to him ; he 

247 



On Growing Old 



finds that his name is known where he did not 
expect it to be known. Besides, the years have 
taught him the power of discriminating. He 
comes to know that complete victory, ecstatic 
and unbroken bliss, or great fortune, are things 
either impossible of realisation, or, to say the 
least, realised by a very few. He tries to " see 
life steadily, and see it whole," and in a measure 
he succeeds. By the way, Matthew Arnold was 
advised by an impertinent critic to take his own 
prescription when he lamented that there were so 
many Philistines in the world, and so few people 
who knew even as much as he did about Celtic 
poetry. But when men are unpleasantly reminded 
that they are really on the verge of old age, they 
do not play with the thought. It is constantly 
with them, and they are afraid to speak of it. 
They try to postpone the period, to reassure 
themselves from the statistics that life is growing 
longer, to recall and bring into view the instances 
of men much older than they, who have held high 
posts in defiance of all competitors. There are 
people who like to think that they are growing 
old, but as a rule they are fortunately placed. 
They have a competency, they have occupations 
248 



On Growing Old 



which they long to take up. They have friends, 
and they have a fair measure of health. What 
they hope to do is to escape from their present 
way of living and begin a new way — a way so 
new that it will be almost equivalent to a new 
life. 

Why do people shrink from the thought of 
growing old ? First among the reasons I should 
put the fear of want. Among literary men very 
few have succeeded in saving enough to live upon 
in comfort. Very many have been able to save 
nothing. They know that under modern con- 
ditions every year makes their present income 
more precarious, and the mental misery caused by 
these thoughts is perhaps the most acute in 
human experience. It is of no use to laugh at 
it, and very little use to reason with it. In A 
Window in Thrums Mr. Barrie tells us of Jimsy 
Duthie, who gave thirty years of his life to the 
writing and printing of " The Millennium : an 
Epic Poem in Txvelve Books, by James Duthie." 
Jimsy had saved ;^ioo, and when he was neither 
able to work nor to live alone, his friends cast 
about for a home for his few remaining years. 
He was very spent and feeble, yet he had the 

249 



On Growing Old 



fear that he might be still alive when all his 
money was gone. After that was the workhouse. 
He covered sheets of paper with calculations 
about how long the ;^ioo would last, if he gave 
away for board and lodging ten shillings, nine 
shillings, seven and sixpence a week. At last, with 
sore misgiving, he went to live with a family, who 
took him for eight shillings. Less than a month 
afterwards he died. But how was he to know that 
he was to die so soon ? " What will become of my 
wife and children when I am gone, or when I am 
out of work?" is a question which multitudes brood 
over till they are nearly insane. Yet it may very 
well be argued that there are worse things in life 
than the want of money. Perhaps, but almost 
every one can realise the meaning of poverty. 
Almost every one has had at one time or another 
the experience of actual pecuniary pressure. 
People with the power of imagining are happily 
not very numerous. The exercise of the imagina- 
tion is not needed when the evils of poverty have 
to be realised. It has been suggested that there 
is another cause for the dreary eminence which 
want of money occupies among the woes of 
humanity. It is often attributed to injustice on 
250 



On Growing Old 



the part of men, and it is often caused by the 
harshness of an employer or by the treachery of a 
friend. The human mind rages against injustice, 
especially if it is prolonged and irremediable. 
When afflictions more dire than poverty come, 
they seem often to proceed directly from a higher 
power, and they are therefore more easily 
acquiesced in. They may be submitted to in a 
spirit of religious faith, or they may be accepted 
as the sentence of that fate against which all 
appeal is vain. I do not need to labour this 
point. Any one may see how little the ordinary 
man can afford to talk about growing old. 

(2) Another great reason for the dislike of old 
age is the mortification it often inflicts on vanity. 
Honour, love, obedience are the fit accompani- 
ments of old age, but old age often looks round 
and finds that they are not there. The young 
have the upper hand, and the man who for many 
years has been successful, who has been deferred 
to, and has had as much of his own way as it is 
good for a human being to have, suddenly finds 
that no value is set on his opinions. He is perhaps 
not consulted, or, if he is consulted, his views are 
quietly set aside. He is made to feel that younger 

251 



On Growing Old 



men regard him as an old fogey, superfluous on 
the stage, who ought to be cultivating his garden 
instead of interfering with important affairs. It is 
pathetic to see how, after the weight of years is 
heavy, many men still struggle to maintain their 
place, and are pained even more by the courtesy 
than by the rudeness of their juniors. They are 
treated as if they were children, and they know it. 
They see others pressing to the front while they 
themselves are civilly, inexorably driven to the 
background. I have not a great deal of sympathy 
for them. A man should be content if he has had 
his day, and the day does not stretch over all the 
years of a long lifetime. There are men who are 
not at all troubled, but rather relieved, when they 
realise that their responsibilities are falling away 
from them. They have always disliked respon- 
sibility. They have continued to bear it, because 
it was their duty ; but they have been ever ready 
to welcome an honourable dismissal. If the old 
man who has done his best work will himself 
be the first to recognise the fact, he will save 
himself many troubles and heartaches, and reap 
rich reward. 

(3) There are many who have done well in 
252 



On Growing Old 



business, and can retire whenever they please to 
Hve comfortably upon their means. What restrains 
them in most cases is the dread of ennui. Mr. 
C. F. Keary in his little book, A Wanderer, makes 
his hero say of his work, " Let us leave it behind 
as soon as may be. If you can save half your 
income, then in a limited number of years — many, 
perhaps, but still a limited number — you will 
have acquired an annuity equal to your usual 
expenditure, and can be (oh, heaven !) free — free 
as air, free as ourselves who write these lines. 
All the labour is kept up in the hope of the 
hour of freedom, of the lifting of the weight, of 
the shaking off the dust which years have accumu- 
lated upon heart and brain." But the rich 
business man, in most cases, has loved his work 
and found his life in it. It is not for the sake 
of money that he pursues it now. It is simply 
because he likes it. He has had little time or 
thought for anything else. He is not cultivated, 
not a lover of books, not able to shine in society, 
but he knows his own work, and he can talk about 
it with those who also know it, and enjoy himself. 
He has a dread of the time when he will have 
nothing to do. It must be owned that he has 



^Sl 



On Growing Old 



much reason on his side. Ennui, in the full sense 
of the word, is one of the most terrible things that 
can befall a man. One need not go to the 
extreme of the Parisians before the siege, whose 
whole aim it was to make the hours of the day fly 
round like wheel spokes, of which neither the form 
nor tint could be discovered, who regarded it 
as the chief end of man to contrive that he 
should never know what it was to be bored. The 
real way of fighing ennui is to work in one way 
or another. The dreary, passionless lassitude 
which settles down upon those who have nothing 
to do, and are without resources, is apt to end in 
despair and madness and suicide. The simple 
want of interest in life explains many deaths. 
Some well-meaning theorists dream of a world 
without faith and without work. Such a world, 
if it ever existed, would have but two outlets — 
the plunge into debauchery and the plunge into 
utter despair. A wise man ought to provide 
interests outside his daily work to which he can 
betake himself when his strength decays. I 
should like very much to retire, but if I did I 
should wish to have a fresh start, to go and live 
in a new country, learn a new language, study a 



On Growing Old 



new literature. I cannot understand how the Hfe 
quite without occupation should be other than a 
miserable and unbearable thing. 

(4) Another fear of old age is the loss of 
friendship. In their dependence on friends, 
human beings differ very much. It was said of 
the man who read perhaps more books than any 
other man of his generation, that he never was 
known to read a book twice. He had no 
favourites, and in the same way he had no close 
friends. He was courteous and accessible, and 
able to give a measure of good-will to all good 
people he met, and he could give no more. 
Others, again, have a few friends, and when they 
lose them they are not able to replace them. 
As the years pass we must grow solitary unless 
we can make new friends, and the old can make 
them if they will. They ought to choose, if 
possible, men younger than themselves ; and I 
think, as they rule, they do sa The new friend 
cannot share with you the experiences of the 
past, but, in spite of that, he may do very 
much to enrich your life. Old men, with rare 
exceptions, have had to face the bitterest bereave- 
ments ; and these bereavements do sometimes 



On Growing Old 



leave a most bitter, unalterable, unending, and 
even savage sense of hunger which continually 
bites the heart. But far more often the stinging 
sorrow becomes a sacred, peaceful joy to those 
who are " sure of a meeting." And for most of 
us there is a young life springing round us in 
which we look to have the best happiness of the 
remaining years. 

(5) Another terror of old age is the weakening 
of intellectual faculties. This is apt to show 
itself in the inaccessibility of the mind, not to 
new facts, but to new ideas. An old business 
man will go on enlarging his business. What he 
finds very difficult to comprehend is that the way 
in which he has done business successfully is 
no longer the right way. It is so with military 
men. The Duke of Wellington showed it in 
his old age, and even Von Moltke, though he 
never failed in strategy, could not understand the 
alteration of the system of discipline. Politicians 
show it most markedly. Thiers was a conspicu- 
ous example in his old age. He could take in 
facts as well as in his youth, but no vivifying 
thought could break its way into his mind. Lord 
Palmerston owned this weakness in regard to 
256 



On Growing Old 



scientific truth, and any one may see it among 
old theologians. They lose the acuteness of their 
sensibility to the atmosphere round them. But 
one of the best examples I know of is Sainte 
Beuve's essay on the writings of Provost Paradol, 
who, of course, was much his junior. The great 
critic was irritated by Prevost Paradol's notions 
about parliamentary government and democracy, 
and the impossibility of the old state of things. 
Sainte Beuve was thoroughly satisfied with the 
Second Empire, and did not see but that it would 
last. Provost Paradol seemed to him to be a 
young man destroying himself, in the vain attempt 
to do what so many had failed in doing. Yes, 
but the Second Empire did not last. Old men, 
and for that matter middle-aged men and young 
men, are always in the same danger. They 
think that things will go on much as they are ; 
but the leader of the future knows that they will 
not go on, that they will all be changed within 
fifteen years, and it is this knowledge that gives 
him the power to change them. 

I will not say much about the fear of physical 
suffering in old age, a fear not much spoken of, 
but very present to some. Even if it comes, it 

s 257 



On Growing Old 



is by no means fatal to happiness. I have seen 
close at hand for years human lives gradually 
being consumed by one of the most terrible of 
maladies, and yet with many intervals of bright- 
ness, with many hopes and consolations. If one 
were asked what blessing he would most desire, 
the readiest answer would be, " Perfect health " ; 
and yet I doubt whether on reflection this would 
be the choice of the wise man. The man who 
is always in perfect health is ignorant of many 
things which it is well to know. The thought 
should not be suffered to rest over-much on 
what may be between us and the new beginning. 
" He has won awa ' " — a Scotch phrase for one 
who has gone through the struggle — says all that 
need be said. 



258 



XXVI 
Broken-Hearted 

We know that great sorrows sometimes kill ; 
we know that in many cases they leave their 
mark on the whole succeeding life, even though 
the heart that was broken at the time may 
be more or less handsomely pieced together, 
and a measure of happiness may remain. The 
question is whether there are sorrows that have 
no cure, wounds that do not cease to bleed till 
they are stanched in death. One of the wisest 
commentators on human life — La Bruy^re — 
answers this question in the negative. He 
says : " There are frightful and horrible calamities 
which we dare not think of, and the mere sight 
of which makes us shudder. If it happens to 
a man to encounter them, he finds resources in 
himself of which he was not aware. He stiffens 
himself against his misfortune, and bears it better 

259 



Broken-Hearted 



than he could have expected." Is it always so? 
Tennyson says : 

Never morning wore 
To evening, but some heart did break. 

It may seem absurd to interpret poetry as an 
arithmetician would interpret it, but is there not 
a curious moderation in this statement? I will 
not say that Tennyson meant that one human 
heart was broken every day, and that three 
hundred and sixty-five were broken in the 
course of a year. But perhaps it is permissible 
to suggest that he knew that the broken-hearted 
were few, but that they did exist. By the 
broken-hearted, I mean those who, after their 
great calamity, are never again really happy. 

Are not hearts sometimes broken for love, 
and never healed again ? Mr. Hardy is com- 
monly supposed to have reached the climax of 
tragedy in Tess when he says : " ' Justice ' was 
done, and the President of the Immortals (in 
iEschylean phrase) had ended his sport with 
Tess." But I think the climax of the tragedy 
is in the closing sentence of the book : " The 
two speechless gazers bent themselves down to 
260 



Broken-Hearted 



the earth, as if in prayer, and remained thus a 
long time, absolutely motionless : the flag con- 
tinued to wave silently. As soon as they had 
strength they arose, joined hands again, and 
went on." Let it be remembered that Tess 
had besought her sister to marry Angel. When 
Tess was scarcely cold, the two, after a brief 
pause, went out into the world together. What 
a picture of the fickleness of human love ! that 
fickleness which, in Mr. Hardy's view, is the 
last tragedy of life. If all lovers were fickle 
then there would be no tragedy, but it is because 
there is constancy on one side and fickleness on 
the other that agony begins, and will not cease. 
I am not speaking of the ordinary proposal 
and rejection, when a suitor is dismissed with a 
homily, a pastoral benediction, and the honorary 
rank of brother, and sets out to seek another 
mate the same evening or, at the latest, the 
next afternoon. All hearts are not like that. 
Who can forget the madness, if it was mad- 
ness, of Farmer Boldwood in Far from the 
Madding Crowd} " The only signs of the terrible 
sorrow Boldwood had been combating through 
the night, and was combating now, were the 

261 



Broken-Hearted 



want of colour in his well-defined face, the en- 
larged appearance of the veins in his forehead 
and temples, and the sharper lines about his 
mouth. . . . The clash of discord between mood 
and matter here was forced painfully home to 
the heart ; and, as in laughter there are more 
dreadful phases than in tears, so was there in 
the steadiness of this agonised man an expres- 
sion deeper than a cry." Love has much grief 
as well as much gladness to answer for, and 
Miss Mary Robinson's poem, " Le Roi est Mort," 
has a meaning : 

And shall I weep that Love's no more, 

And magnify his reign? 
Sure never mortal man before 

Would have his grief again. 
Farewell the long-continued ache, 
The days a-dream, the nights awake ; 
I will rejoice and merry make, 

And never more complain ! 

King Love is dead, and gone for aye, 
Who ruled with might and main, 

Nor with a bitter word one day 
I found my tyrant slain. 

And he in Heathenesse was bred, 

Nor ever was baptised, 'tis said. 

Nor is of any creed, and dead 
Can never rise again. 

262 



Broken-Hearted 



Bereavements sometimes kill at once, and in 
many cases, although the pain is softened by the 
lapse of time and by new friendships and asso- 
ciations, they are never remembered without a 
sharp pang. Sometimes they really kill one 
life of the spirit, though another rises in its 
stead, and the world thinks that the two lives 
were one and continuous. The most powerful 
and painful account of this will be found in the 
preface which Mrs. Oliphant wrote for her novel 
Agnes. She wrote the book after her only 
daughter and most beloved little companion 
was suddenly struck down. Years after she 
says : " Now and then my mind fixes on one 
point, till I get almost to feel as if it was I who 
had sacrificed my child. First one thing and 
then another, and my thoughts settle on that, 
and go round and round it till I feel as if my 
head was going." Years after, when her last 
child died, she broke down. She was still able 
to do work, but her nights were spent in sleep- 
lessness and in tears, and her heart was broken. 
She was very glad to die, and the news of the 
beginning of the end was most welcome, and 
received with the greatest serenity and happiness. 

263 



Broken-Hearted 



She was " sick of believing, sick to see and know." 
I doubt if true mothers ever forget their lost 
children. The heartache of a mother who has lost 
a child is never [ended, though it sometimes sleeps. 
A great disappointment will sometimes per- 
manently darken a whole life and cut it short. 
The Life of Frederick Robertson of Brighton is 
the saddest book I know. He was so young, 
so gifted, he seemed to have all the sources of 
happiness within his reach, with his wife, and 
his little children, and his work, and his faith. 
Nothing, however, seemed to touch more than 
a moment the profound melancholy which was 
his constant mood. In his biography no light 
falls on the pages from his little children. Wife 
and mother are hardly named. His work, 
outwardly and inwardly successful as it was, 
seemed to bring him nothing but bitterness, 
and even his sincere faith opened no fountain 
of gladness in his heart. One who knew him 
well attributes his gloom in a large measure to 
the disappointment of his early ambition to be 
a soldier. This was the great longing of his 
heart from the first, and it grew into a settled 
purpose. When his father proposed to him 
264 



Broken-Hearted 



the Church for a profession, his answer was 
decisive. " Anything but that," he said. Yet 
it came to pass that he entered the Church, 
and did his Hfe-work there. Notwithstanding, 
often, when passing a soldier in the street, he 
would say : " Well, so I am to have nothing 
to do with them." I do not attribute the 
terrible melancholy of Robertson entirely to this. 
There must have been physical sources besides. 
He was born with a temperament not easily 
brightened, with a heart that asked more than 
life has to give, and which could not make 
much out of little. Yet the first disappointment 
was never got over. It is of no use saying that 
he would not have been happy in the Army. 
Probably he would not have been happy any- 
where, but there is a certain content comes to 
a man when he has his own way. Besides, 
the bitterness of disappointment is often greatest 
when the loss sustained is imaginary rather than 
real. I am sure hearts are sometimes broken 
simply because a certain position has been 
denied, a certain career closed. The imagination 
lingers vainly upon that, and spurns whatever 
good there is in the everyday existence. 

265 



Broken-Hearted 



Shame is very hard to get over. When we 
can keep our griefs to ourselves or to a small 
circle, the chances of recovery are numerous. 
Once they are told to all the world, once 
we are publicly disgraced, it seems as if the 
brightness of life had gone for ever. In these 
times everything is soon forgotten, but the 
readers and admirers of Montalembert will not 
forget his tribute to his friend Lamoriciere. 
General Lamoriciere died in France more than 
thirty years ago, amidst such mourning and 
indignation as has seldom been manifested at 
a funeral. And Montalembert's tribute expresses 
the thrilling passion of bitter wrong and grief. 
Lamoriciere had a wonderful career as a soldier, 
and even as a statesman. He was at one time 
Minister of War to the Government. Just as 
he was at the height of his fame, at forty-five, 
his military and public career was suddenly 
ended, by one of those miracles of inconstancy 
and ingratitude of which France has sometimes 
shown herself capable. He was thrown into 
disgrace, condemned to inaction and nullity, to 
'those rendings of impotence, that deadening 
disgust, that nakedness of books and the daily 
266 



Broken-Hearted 



walk, the weariness of ' unoccupied life.' " He 
did his best, and chose for his habitual reading 
The Imitation of Jesus Christ and other such 
books. But the picture of what remained to 
him is the grey vignette of a life in death, 
and this though he suffered to the end and 
overcame, bearing the injuries of fate with a 
Christian gravity and modesty. The trial was 
endured, the defile traversed, the yoke borne to 
the end. Still Montalembert says : " We cannot 
reveal all, and what we can say is nothing 
beside the suffering which we have seen, felt, 
known, and shared." 

There are men, and women too, who never 
recover the loss of faith. A. H. Clough will 
occur to every one as an example of this. He 
was broken-hearted ; though he struggled for a 
time, it was not for long. G. J. Romanes was 
another, though he found his way back to faith. 
" The two most precious things," he said, " in 
life are faith and love. The whole thing is 
vanity and vexation of spirit without faith and 
love. Perhaps it is by way of compensation 
for having lost the former that the latter has 
been dealt me in such full measure. I never 

267 



Broken-Hearted 



knew any one so well off in this respect. Still 
even love is not capable of becoming to me 
any compensation for the loss of faith." 

I will end with what is perhaps an anti- 
climax, and will fortify myself with the authority 
of La Bruyere. He says that the only grief 
that time does not soften is the loss of pro- 
perty. La Bruyere was anything but a cynic. 
He was grave and compassionate, as well as 
rigidly veracious. If you will think of the 
misery caused by such collapses as those of 
the City of Glasgow Bank and the Liberator 
Society, you will understand. I have never 
known any grief that ended life very quickly, 
except this single grief of sudden and unexpected 
pecuniary ruin. Failures like these I have named 
led in many cases to death or madness. Even 
when there was fortitude enough to go on with 
life, the life was often permanently shadowed 
and embittered. It is so very hard to go 
on for years and years accumulating by strict 
frugality a provision for one's self and one's 
own family circle, and see it all swept away in 
a moment by the deceit of the men we have 
trusted. Young men can renew the battle ; so 
268 



Broken-Hearted 



can middle-aged men, though they see very well 
that it means that they must struggle to the 
very end, and that the end is nearer than it 
would otherwise have been. But when one is 
old and weary, and cannot hope to do much 
in making the loss good, and is condemned to 
witness, hour by hour and day by day, the 
privations which he had toiled so hard to avert 
from him and his, the bitterness seems incurable, 
the loss without recovery, the life dashed in 
pieces. 

I have said nothing in this letter of the con- 
solations of Christianity. It may suffice to 
recall that the last book ever written by John 
Bunyan had for title. The Excellency of a Broken 
Heart. 



269 



XXVII 
The Innermost Room 

I BELIEVE that every human being has an 
innermost room in his soul, into which he never 
admits any one — perhaps because he cannot. 
When a boy, I was deeply impressed by a 
passage in John Foster's Journal, in which he 
says that when he entered a company he was 
often shy at first, but was reassured when he 
bethought himself that, after all, no eyes could 
see what was passing within his soul. It is 
true we are not known, even when we are well 
known, by those who live with us, by those 
who are bound to us by the firmest ties, or by 
those who have shared with us the closest 
intimacies of friendship. We have deep secrets, 
all of us, even though there is nothing in our 
lives over which we try to cast a veil. We 
are not known even when we die, and all that 
can be revealed is revealed, when the secret 
270 



The Innermost Room 



drawer in our desk is opened, and the lock of 
the child's hair, " hair that drained the sun for 
gold," the two or three faded letters, the ring, 
the photograph, have all been looked upon 
reverently or irreverently. Our secret has died 
with us. They have not spared Charlotte Bronte. 
They have published almost every scrap of her 
handwriting, and sold almost every one of her 
few possessions, and criticised her, and theorised 
upon her without stint. But her secret went 
with her, I have no manner of doubt. 

At times in our life we are always living in 
the innermost room, even though we seem to 
be busy in the outer court. We cannot live 
anywhere else. But, for the most part, we 
repair to it only at intervals. The board is 
spread in the other chambers, and they are 
crowded and cheerful. We have upon us the 
stress of life, the hard task that has to be 
accomplished in the short day. Yet even then 
at intervals we suddenly quit our surroundings. 
Have we not seen that look in the eyes, which 
tells us that even the nearest and the dearest 
have flown from us to a restful or wistful soli- 
tude? And whither they go we cannot come. 

271 



Ihe Innermost Room 



Sometimes an irresistible impulse comes over a 
man. He leaves his office and his books for 
a lonely walk, or he goes, because he cannot 
help himself, into a quiet room, where he may 
be alone for a little with his own thoughts. 
If he cannot quite escape, you will see him in 
that reverie, that brown study, which is passed 
not nearly so much in thinking as in feeling. 
Just because it is spent in feeling, its experiences 
can never be completely expressed in words. 
Or you may not have visited the innermost 
room for months and months, but there comes 
a time of release when you go on holiday, and 
find yourself alone in a foreign hotel. Even 
amidst the crowd of new objects that solicit 
you, you will spend most of your time, not 
in the foreign city, but in the innermost 
room. 

Look around the innermost room, and you 
cannot explain how it has been built and 
furnished. It has built and furnished itself. 
You gaze at its pictures, its trinkets, its stains 
of blood, with a dull wonder at the sight of 
them. These, you think, should not be there. 
Other things should be there that have been 
272 



The Innermost Room 



of more consequence. There have been days 
in your life, apparently much more important 
days, that all may know of, when you were 
crowned in the eyes of men, or visibly struck 
to the earth in humiliation or woe. How has 
it come to pass that these days are not recorded 
in the innermost room ? There are faces that 
you have gazed into for years and years, and 
these have vanished ; but on the walls of the 
innermost room other faces are hanging. The 
stress is not laid where observers might think 
it should be laid, where you think yourself it 
should lie. Life, as it shapes itself to you in 
the innermost room, has its days, its ghosts, its 
treasures, but how they have ranked and ranged 
themselves there you do not know, and there- 
fore can never tell. That is why you cannot 
admit others into the innermost room, though 
you were ever so willing to bring them. There 
may be nothing to hide, but somehow no one 
can enter, because the door will open to none 
but yourself You know that none may enter 
it now, and yet fancy that once there were 
those who entered it with you, and sigh for 
their presence. 

T 273 



The Innermost Room 



But in the other days 'twas otherwise ; 

Silence itself conveyed with tender breath 
That thrill of sound wherein the difference lies 

'Twixt life and noiseless death ; 
In the soft air there rose a murmur sweet, 

A hum of voice and words, 
A sound of coming feet, 

A ring of soft accords, 
That entering in, filled all the inner room 

With friendly faces bright, 
Where there were ceaseless whispers m the gloom. 

And laughters in the light ; 
And save some sudden thought fantastical 

Might flutter in a maiden soul. 
There all was known to all. 

And shared both joy and dole ; 
Making divine the common days 
With dearest blame and sweetest praise. 

It is a dream. The door was as fast to the 
dead as it is to the Hving. 

The innermost room may be a torture chamber, 
or a shrine of peace. According as it is one 
or the other, so is life happy or unhappy. For 
the blessedness of life does not so much depend 
on what is passing in the outer chambers, as 
on what is passing in the secret place of the 
soul. It is because we forget this that we 
blunder so much, strive so hard, are so bitterly 
274 



The Innermost Room 



disappointed with our so-called successes. In 
the innermost room remorse may be present, 
infinite repining, infinite sorrow. The very 
thought of entering it may be an agony, but 
enter it you must. An unseen force drags you 
into the place of pain. Or it may be a shrine 
of rest, a refuge from the storms of life, a 
veritable chamber of peace. To visit it, to 
linger in it, may be the chief joy and solace of 
existence. One may come from it with radiant 
face and strong heart, able to cope with his 
difficulties, and perform his allotted task in 
another spirit. Is this the last word ? No ; 
the riddle of life is never understood until we 
know that the torture chamber may become, 
not all at once, but by sure and slow degrees, 
a shrine of peace. Most of us know how this 
comes to pass in sorrow, how a sober joy at 
last replaces the bitter anguish. It may even 
come to be so where there has been shame, 
and treachery, and base surrender of the will. 
The test of the true religion may be found 
here. The religion that we need is a religion 
that will lay all the ghosts, that will cast the 
instruments of torture from the innermost room, 

275 



The Innermost Room 



that will divide the great glooms, and make it 
a place of repair. And this is why we must 
always say to the sufferer, in his most cruel 
hour of endurance : " Hope on, hope ever. It 
will not be always as it is now. The place 
to which you are now dragged, as by furies, 
may come one day to be your sure and chosen 
home. You will one day want nothing better 
than the peace of the innermost room." 

I love to think of the solitude of the soul, 
There is no characterisation of human beings 
that is more hateful and more false than the 
common saying that there is nothing in them. 
There is the innermost room. Every human 
soul is a mystery to the soul that knows it 
best, and should, therefore, be held sacred. 
Clouds and darkness are round about it. You 
may spend hours of every day for years with 
one whose innermost thought you have never 
once surprised. Even the child on the street, 
who runs your message, lives in a world to 
which you have no entrance. What one knows 
of himself should teach how little he knows of 
other people ; should deliver him from too 
much dependence on their judgments, whether 
276 



The Innermost Room 



favourable or unfavourable. They cannot judge, 
because they do not know. 

I am not so good as I seem, 
Yet I seem not so good as I am. 

The last judgment of our life must be a judg- 
ment of what has passed in the innermost room, 

And if thou wilt, draw near, O unknown friend ! 

Thou somewhere in the world apart, 
To whose sole ears ascend 

The outcries of the heart ; 
Thou all unknown, unnamed, and undivined, 

Who yet will recognise 
That which, 'mid all revealings of the mind, 

Was meant but for your eyes. 
If you should e'er come sudden through the gloom, 

In any shape you list to wear, 
I wait you in this silent room. 

With many a wonder for your ear. 
For you the song is sung, the tale is told; 

For you all secrets are. 
Although it was not thus of old ; 

And the door stands ajar. 
To let you lightly in, where I alone 
Wait in the silence, O my friend unknown ! 
Who, in the noon of life, when gladness ends. 
Art nearer than all friends. 



Printed by Hazelly Watson, &• Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury, England. 






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